Online Reporter
Nelson Sango
Correspondent
REFLECTING on the urgent need to confront the profound challenges facing, not only the child, parents, and community, but also the very future of the economy, the Heritage-Based Curriculum (HBC) emerges as a transformative response.
Its major role as a panacea to this discourse is its intended goal of infusing classroom education with practical modern skills which capacitate the school graduate with wealth creation skills.
A graduate only able to regurgitate classroom education or display practical skill in agriculture, carpentry or science innovation, but devoid of commercial and entrepreneurial literacy is still a square plug in a round hole pertaining this matrix of thinking.
Learners require literacy, ability and capacitation to manipulate those acquired skills in class into wealth creation tangible deliverables. Thus, the HBC is a critical essentiality in the process of modelling fundamentals critical to build the bedrock a future booming economy.
It, however, has to be modified on the fact that it most critically focuses on the refining the practical skills of the child, especially STEM subjects, and less aggressive on the need to refine entrepreneurship and business skills of the child starting from elementary education.
The abbreviation itself can be more complete as STEM i.e. Science, Technology, Entrepreneurship and Mathematics. Yes, we have seen some schools bringing in trainers on various projects like apiculture, aquaculture, and detergent making for the benefit of learners, and also engaging into the projects.
However, more has to be done to transform these vital efforts towards wealth creation potential of the child, the school, the community and the aggregate economy itself.
Learned entrepreneurial and business skills are a vital missing gap in this whole matrix. Just like Gender Education and Guiding and Counselling are cross cutting issues on the aggregate education syllabi, the issue of entrepreneurship is also inescapable. So, pertaining this particular framework of thinking, the seamless fusion of the HBC and or HBC5.0 with entrepreneurship skilling from elementary up to tertiary education can never be overemphasised.
There requires a vertical linkage between these two intricately and hierarchically related academic systems. As the learner progresses from primary to secondary and eventually tertiary education, he or she should receive relevantly packaged academic level entrepreneurship and business literacy knowledge.
This is critical to leverage their skills development process and classroom education with wealth creation abilities that aligns with their age. That explains why the HBC even starts with infant skills module and at the apex is the HBC 5.0 tertiary education STEM policy.
The most important idea to be configured is that entrepreneurship and business literacy should not classroom accounting, marketing, economics or business studies, it is imparting fundamental basic skills to the child which include recording keeping, understanding of basic market trends and human capital resource needs and respond to these in an innovative way that stimulates increase in personal and institutional wealth.
The other critical aspect of HBC is that it must allow a skills exchange process between the school and the local community, thus a transformational agent of Local Economic Development. By becoming a business incubation centre, community members can learn critical entrepreneurship skills and business literacy from school projects.
Members of the community currently receive such knowledge through once off trainings from Government departments which are based in central district administration centres. The trainings are largely theoretical and due to human resource and time strains, monitoring and evaluations are scarce and far between.
This compromises project assessments and project profilings. Such activities are important tools to measure if such trainings are bringing forward positive knowledge based entrepreneurial value to beneficiary communities in terms of wealth creation.
With such a backdrop, it becomes indispensable to have local central institutions that provide the community with such support for the community. The school can play a central quadruple role of then imparting knowledge based entrepreneurial literacy to (i) learners, (ii) community, (ii) educators and (iv) creating alternative sources of income to the school. The School Project (IGA) will create a model that will provide practical entrepreneurial skilling and literacy to all these beneficiaries.
However, as this takes place, it is also sensitive and critical that the administration balances between project and basic curriculum activities.
As profits grow, there is risk of defocusing from the institution’s core mandate of classroom education.
The two should complement each other and need not become competitors. The project should remain a subordinate unit of the mainstream institution. Also essential to manage is how project focal teachers and if any other auxiliary support team are incentivized. If incentivised, the incentive should come strictly from projects’ coffers and outputs. The quantum of incentives need to appreciation tokens and not be so high to create destructive competition among the teaching staff.
Selection of projects’ focal persons must be diligently done, with transparency and based on merit towards one’s skills, experience and knowledge towards executing expected duties.
The Secretary of Education’s Circular 21 of 2024 is intrusively instructive that the: “Heritage Based Curriculum emphasises on the acquisition of 21st skills such as foundational knowledge, critical thinking, creativity, collaboration and acquisition of literacies. Tasks and assignments should be structured to encourage problem solving, creativity thinking, reflecting the core principles of the Heritage Based Curriculum.”
The above based abilities reciped together with the concept entrepreneurial literacy are indispensable to support the NDSI policy of attaining a middle income economy by 2030. It suffice soothes the appetite of a broad and inclusive aggregate economy accommodating the complex and wide skill base residing in youths passing through the HBC.It is the way to go.
If the Asian Tiger countries among them South Korea, Japan and even smaller ones like Thailand and Taiwan have successfully sojourned through the same trenches, Zimbabwe is definitely engraved in the future Hall of Economic Fame.
Through championing human skill and entrepreneurship development, renowned American educationists and human rights activist, Booker T Washington annihilated impediments against the negros (black people) material civilisation advancement and social recognition as cognitive human beings during slavery
The late Olive ‘Samanyanga’ Mtukudzi’s words: “Kana kuri kopa, kopa dhoiri rakanaka”, loosely translated “Pluck the best fruit from the best tree” rings into mind. RIP Samanyanga…….
Nelson Sango is employed by the Government as an economist. He can be contacted on 0773 993 508 or [email protected]
