• Zambians forced government to implement what they were not ready for immediately.
• Free education is supposed to be supported by infrastructure and adequate recruitment of teachers.
• These numbers will overwhelm the system to an extent that quality will be compromised.

National Union of Public and Private Educators of Zambia (NUPPEZ) says high teacher-pupil ratio resulting from the Free Education policy will have an adverse effect on the quality of education.
Speaking in an interview with Money FM News, Union President Victor Muyumba noted that due to the free education policy, the teachers are overwhelmed because in some cases they are teaching more than 100 pupils in a class.
Mr. Muyumba said Zambians forced government to implement what they were not ready for immediately because free education is supposed to be supported by infrastructure as well as proper and adequate recruitment of teachers.
He stated that government should have started by constructing enough schools and recruited the teachers in order to create adequate classrooms before implementing the free education policy.
“We forced government to implement what they were not ready for immediately. You can’t tell a government that is two or three months in office to implement free education. Free education is supposed to be supported by infrastructure, proper and adequate recruitment of teachers. So we started with what we should have ended with.”
“These numbers will overwhelm the system to an extent that quality will be compromised and this is going to force government to start constructing classroom blocks and recruiting teachers because the demand will be very high for teachers and classroom space. We don’t know to what extend government is able to go in terms of meeting the demand, but this is the situation we have created unto ourselves,” Mr. Muyumba noted.
Mr. Muyumba further said the free education policy has attracted overwhelming response because even pupils who were not in school due to lack of funds have also gone back to class following the pronouncement, therefore resulting in overcrowded classrooms.
“And we thought all of us maybe even government that it was just going to end with those that were in school at that time, not knowing that most of the school going children were home owing to lack of money and when it was said education is free, they went to school and those are the consequences, overcrowded classrooms.”
“So we need to start asking ourselves questions, do we want education for the masses or we want free education because what is happening right now, has nothing to do with quality but quantity. We all cried for free education even when government was not clear and ready at the time on how to proceed, we should have given them time and they too should have done their calculations. We are happy the children are in schools but the question is what is happening in those schools?” he wondered.
Government has introduced free education from grade 1 to grade 12.