Chronicle EditorRobin Muchetu, Senior Reporter
A NEW school curriculum for primary and secondary education is on the horizon with stakeholder consultations being held to ensure a smooth transition process.
The new curriculum is likely to be introduced anytime from next year and is expected to transform the country’s education sector by ensuring that learners get top-notch education that will enable them to participate in job creation when they exit the school system. The new curriculum will come from the curriculum review process that was embarked on this year and whose results are being looked into.
In an interview with the Sunday News, Director Communication and Advocacy in the Ministry of Primary and Secondary Education Mr Taungana Ndoro confirmed the developments. He said consultations with various stakeholders were underway on the curriculum review process that the Government embarked on and the results will be announced before end of year.
“We are currently looking at findings from the curriculum review process we had and after that, we will inform the nation. At the moment it is being circulated internally. A report is definitely going to come and we can only comment on what will have been tabled in that report,” said Mr Ndoro.
Mr Ndoro also said the review process was not being done by the Ministry of Primary and Secondary Education alone but with the involvement of other stakeholders.
“There are a lot of consultations that are going on at the moment including consultation with the Ministry of Higher and Tertiary Education, Innovation, Science and Technology Development that is responsible for teacher training. When we have a new curriculum it also impacts the curriculum in which teachers are going to be trained. Teachers must understand the curriculum they are going to teach. The Minister of Primary and Secondary Education will advise the nation on the outcome of the curriculum review process and the resultant curriculum framework before the end of the year,” said Mr Ndoro.
The development comes at a time when there has been mixed feelings over the Continuous Assessment Learning Areas (CALA) component of the curriculum with stakeholders such as parents expressing reservations on the model of delivery, time, and costs associated with it.
Teachers on the other hand have, through their representative unions been raising concerns over their ill-preparedness to deal with the CALA component of the curriculum saying implementation was a challenge as time allocated for the various learning areas was limited.
Dr Sifiso Mpofu, the chief executive officer of the Zimbabwe Teachers’ Association (Zimta) said they established from their structural reports that teachers fell short of critical assessment skills of the learning areas.
Some of the initiatives that Zimta asked the Ministry of Primary and Secondary Education to employ included improving school infrastructure such as electricity and connecting them to the internet so that teachers can access online information about the curriculum and run online courses on the same. — @NyembeziMu
derick.khumalo