Zimbabwe's Children Are Working Adult Hours, And We Call It Education

Zimbabwe's Children Are Working Adult Hours — And We Call It Education

By Simbarashe Namusi

If an employer required staff to work six days a week, spend eight hours a day on the job, take work home every evening and attend compulsory weekend sessions, labour unions would have something to say about it.

Yet for a growing number of Zimbabwean children, this is simply called school.

A typical learner's day begins before sunrise. School occupies most of the day. Homework follows in the evening. Weekends are increasingly consumed by extra lessons, study groups, and catch-up classes. During examination periods, the pressure intensifies further. The result is that many children in Zimbabwe's education system now operate on schedules that would leave most adults exhausted.

And somehow, we have convinced ourselves that this is normal.

Zimbabwe's commitment to education is one of its proudest national achievements. For decades, education has been viewed as the pathway through which ordinary families could improve their circumstances and secure a better future. Parents who invest heavily in their children's education are acting from a place of sacrifice and hope.

The problem is not that we value education too much.

The problem is that we have increasingly confused education with occupation.

Somewhere along the way, we began measuring educational seriousness by the number of hours a child spends under instruction. More lessons became better lessons. More homework became evidence of academic rigour. More contact hours became proof of commitment.

In this logic, a busy child is a successful child.

But being busy is not the same thing as learning.

A child can spend ten hours a day moving between classrooms and still fail to develop curiosity, creativity, confidence, or critical thinking. Excessive academic pressure on children can undermine the very outcomes it seeks to achieve. Fatigue affects concentration. Stress affects memory. Burnout affects motivation.

What makes this trend in Zimbabwe's schools particularly concerning is what children are being forced to give up in exchange.

Every additional lesson consumes time that might otherwise be spent reading for pleasure, playing sports, exploring hobbies, building friendships, or simply interacting with family. These activities are often dismissed as secondary to academic work, yet they are essential to healthy child development and learner wellbeing.

Play teaches problem-solving.

Sport teaches teamwork and resilience.

Conversation teaches communication.

Unstructured time nurtures imagination.

These are not distractions from education. They are part of education.

Yet, increasingly, childhood itself appears to be treated as an obstacle to academic achievement.

The pressure is understandable. Zimbabwean parents are responding to genuine economic realities. Competition for opportunities is intense. University places are limited. Jobs are scarce. Qualifications continue to carry significant weight in determining life chances.

In such an environment, every parent fears falling behind.

The result is a cycle that feeds itself. If one child attends extra lessons, another feels compelled to do the same. If one school offers Saturday classes, others follow suit. What begins as a strategy for gaining advantage soon becomes an educational arms race from which nobody feels able to withdraw.

Schools are not entirely innocent in this process. Pass rates have become a measure of institutional success. Parents compare schools based on examination performance. Teachers are under pressure to complete syllabi and produce results. The temptation is, therefore, to add more lessons, more revision sessions, and more academic activity.

But there is a danger in assuming that every educational challenge can be solved by extending the school day.

More classroom time does not automatically produce better learning.

Indeed, some of the world's most admired education systems have increasingly recognised that quality education matters more than quantity. Their focus is not on maximising classroom hours but on creating learning environments where students are engaged, curious, and capable of independent thought.

This is not an argument against discipline, effort, or academic excellence. Children should be challenged. Standards matter. Achievement matters.

But so does balance.

A society that values only examination results risks producing young people who know how to pass tests but struggle to navigate life. The future of education in Zimbabwe will demand far more than the ability to memorise information. It will require adaptability, creativity, emotional intelligence, and problem-solving skills, qualities that cannot be developed solely through endless hours of formal instruction.

Perhaps the most revealing question is a simple one.

Would we willingly accept for ourselves the schedules we impose on our children?

If the answer is no, then perhaps it is time to reconsider what success in education truly means.

Zimbabwe's education challenge may no longer be that children are learning too little. It may be that adults have become so anxious about the future that we have mistaken constant activity for meaningful learning.

Children are not examination projects.

They are human beings.

Before they become workers, professionals, entrepreneurs, or leaders, they deserve something increasingly scarce in modern education: the chance to be children.

Simbarashe Namusi is a peace, leadership, and governance scholar writing in his personal capacity.

Academic pressure on children in Zimbabwe