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Charles Mushinga Special Correspondent
Alexandra Park Primary School on Thursday received the Secretary’s Merit Award.
The award is a grand honour rewarded to only 10 out of the 6900 schools under Government radar every year.
“The Secretary’s Merit Award is one of the Ministry’s supervision strategies to improve service delivery through awarding this accolade to excelling schools that would have demonstrated academic, cultural and sporting excellence including other tenets of a Child Friendly School,” said the Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Primary and Secondary Education, Mrs Tumisang Thabela, as she presented the award to Alex Park School for their 2017 exploits, then under former headmaster Essau Marume, who has since retired and passed the baton to current head, Mrs Fungai Koza.
Alex Park School meets all the aforementioned criteria. The school has an excellent academic history that saw them record 100% pass rates three times in a row, from 2014 to 2016; 97.7 percent pass rate for two consecutive years, 2017 and 2018, then, 100% and 95% respectively in 2019 and 2020.
Whilst these are excellent results, the perm sec kept reiterating that there is more to a school and to a child’s education than measurable theoretical results.
“By tradition, the focus has been on academic performance but the Ministry’s thrust is now to ensure that all schools offer a holistic Competence Based Curriculum, which Alexandra Park Primary School has fruitfully done. A holistic curriculum equips learners with relevant knowledge and robust skills for self-empowerment and entrepreneurship skills relevant for the development of our nation. Alexandra Park Primary School has, since 2017, effectively, embraced Science and Technology, Technical Vocational Education, E-teaching and E-learning, holistic sports and culture, learner welfare, sustainable environmental management and school governance, in compliance with policy changes. This curriculum is meant to equip learners with 21st Century skills and exit profiles such as, critical thinking, problem solving, communication and team building, leadership, technological advancement, enterprise, as well as Unhu/Ubuntu/Vumunhu among others,” she said.
The school’s headmistress, Mrs Koza, said hard work and unity of purpose was the secret behind Alex Park’s success. She praised the former headmaster Mr Marume, who has a road named after him in the school,
“I am receiving the award today, on behalf of somebody who worked very hard for it. In addition w give gratitude to the school development committee, the parents, teachers and learners for their hard work and sacrifice . . . we have finally done it!” she said.
A school must also look good and Alex Park has looked like a paradise for decades. The lawns are plush green and always well-maintained. The infrastructure is well maintained – the school has a state of the art ECD centre, a combined traffic and play centre, a culture centre, all weather tennis courts, a well-maintained swimming pool and grounds for sports like cricket, soccer, rugby to mention a few.
Alex Park school produced sporting athletes like Dion Meyers, who is playing National team cricket, Emmanuel Bawa who is playing under 19 cricket; Takanyi Garanganga, Valeria and Kimberly Bunu, and Claire Machisa who are Tennis players. The school’s sporting database also has names of rugby players like Venon Matongo and Munyaradzi Taruvinga who made it into the Sables Rubgy team.
Mrs Thabela also praised the school’s commercial ventures,
“Learners are being equipped with entrepreneurship skills through projects like, gardening, mushroom, poultry (broilers and road runners). These commercial ventures are in tandem with the Ministry’s Commercialisation vision as aligned with the Cabinet Directive, that all schools should engage in commercial activities for the sustainability of their activities,” she said.
For all this great work, Alex Park School walked away with a plaque and $1.3 million meant for the development of a Smart Classroom.
Mr Marume, who was the head when the school won the merit award, previously known as the Secretary’s Bell, also walked away with a tablet and a certificate of excellence.
He said he was humbled by the honour and recognition after serving the school tirelessly for decades.
“I want to challenge all schools in this province, to complement the Ministry’s efforts by embracing ICT as both a Learning Area and a teaching method (E-Learning),” said Mrs Thabela.
She was taken on a tour of the school where pupils showed her their rabbit, mushroom and chicken farming projects.
Online Reporter