$3m for teachers development

Munyaradzi Musiiwa Midlands Bureau
Government has injected $3 million into the Teacher Capacity Development Programme and working with institutions like Midlands State University to enable the teachers to effectively teach the 16 languages under the new curriculum, an official has said. Primary and Secondary Education Permanent Secretary, Dr Sylvia Utete-Masango said in an interview that Government had, since the inception of the Teacher Capacity Development Programme, disbursed $3 million towards its funding. This, she said, was outside a significant amount that had been poured in by other partners and donors.

“We have so far spent $3 million for the Teacher Capacity Development Programme. This figure does not include donor funding,” she said.

“We have, however, encountered some financial challenges here and there and recently we approached the Finance Ministry to resolve the problem and they have committed themselves.” Dr Utete-Masango said her ministry had engaged five universities as implementing partners in the Teacher Capacity Development Programme and some had introduced new degree programmes for the 16 vernacular languages that were recently recognized as official languages.

“Midlands State University has so far enrolled 630 teachers in Information and Communication Technology, Great Zimbabwe University has enrolled teachers in vernacular languages, Zimbabwe Open University focuses on Administration programmes, Bindura enrols in Science subjects and University of Zimbabwe also has its own role,” she said.

More than 2 500 teachers have been enrolled in universities under the teacher capacity development programme. Dr Utete-Masango said the ministry was in the process of procuring learning material for children living with disabilities to be distributed in schools to ensure that they were incorporated into the mainstream education.There have been fears that the programmes could fail due to lack of funding, with reports the programme had been halted at some universities.