Zimbabwe has made it illegal to expel pupils who get pregnant, a measure that would stop many girls from dropping out of school.
A legal amendment announced last week seeks to reinforce a 1999 guideline that was unevenly implemented, and comes as school are closed due to coronavirus pandemic.
There are fears that cases of sexual abuse could rise leading to unwanted pregnancies.
According to officials many girls decide to quit school due to pregnancy and schools do not encourage them to stay.
“I’m expecting every parent and guardian and everyone else to understand that every child must be assisted by all of us to go to school,” Cain Mathema, the education minister in charge of schools, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation on Monday.
“Every child whether boy or girl… has a right to go to school in Zimbabwe,” he said.
According to the ministry of education statistics in Zimbabwe, 12.5% of the country’s roughly 57,500 school dropouts stopped going to school because of pregnancy or marriage reasons.
Source: Reuters
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