The education ministry of Zimbabwe's power-sharing government last week announced that girls who fall pregnant during the course of their studies will no longer face automatic expulsion from school.

Instead, they will be given a three-month holiday and allowed to resume their studies shortly after giving birth.

Student nurses, who faced the same sanction, will also be allowed to pick up where they left off.

The move brings Zimbabwe into line with other countries in the region, including South Africa and Namibia, which try to accommodate rather than stigmatise teenaged mothers.

Zimbabwe goes one step further by also giving the boy who fathered the child three months' leave, to encourage the boys to support the mother.

But the development has not gone down well with conservative groups such as Tsika Dzedu (Our Culture), which visits schools to teach pupils about their Zimbabwean culture.

"It is taboo to allow such absurdity," Muchineripi Marere, the group's head, railed. "It is unmentionable in African culture to allow girls to get pregnant, let alone promote it."

The government retorts that it is a matter of common sense.

"I think we have been punishing our children, who in most cases would have fallen pregnant because of a lack of knowledge of the hazards of what they are doing," said Minister of Education David Coltart.

"I know we have received a bashing on this. But I think we are just being realistic."

Intellectuals and parents of pregnant teenagers have applauded the move.

"It never made sense that the girl who fell pregnant was expelled while the boy who made her pregnant remained in school to finish his education," Zimbabwe's Petina Gappah, author of the acclaimed short story collection An Elegy for Easterly, wrote on social network web site Facebook. "The government of Zimbabwe shows that, where it chooses to be, it can be progressive. More of the same, please!"

By SAPA