ABSTRACT
Newly independent states generally regarded the systems of education they inherited from the colonial powers as designed to serve colonial commercial and political interests. At independence, efforts were made to transform the post-colonial societies so that their economic, social and political institutions would reflect local rather than foreign values. Education was seen as being at the centre of this transformation. Zimbabwe shared this faith in the potency of education to transform the inherited colonial capitalist state to a post-colonial socialist egalitarian state. However, it inherited an education system which was racially divided with the European division designed to produce high-level manpower in government, commerce and industry, and the African division designed largely to produce African teachers and a large pool of semi-skilled and unskilled labourers. The two divisions were administered differently, with the former being more decentralized and headmasters and parent-teacher associations having more autonomy than the latter, which was highly centralized and controlled. Attempts to unite the two systems at independence created problems not only in terms of lack of management skills from the African division, but also in terms of reconciling the inherited ideologies of school management. Meanwhile, varying and sometimes conflicting expectations and aspirations as to the benefits to be derived from independence by parents and pupils made school management for nation building more difficult as there was sometimes disagreement on the ideological basis on which national development should be based. As a result, more was achieved in quantitative than in qualitative changes.
