Chronicle Editor
Flora Fadzai Sibanda
Pupils from more than 10 schools attended this year’s Scholastica Trade Exhibition Indaba for Education at the Academy of Music in Bulawayo yesterday.
The pupils, mostly at Advanced Level, received career development advice and information on what they can pursue after completing their high school studies.
The indaba was running under the theme, “Innovation and Global Competitiveness”, and as a way of unpacking the theme, the topics presented were on innovation, the digital world and how best pupils can embrace them.
Officials from different universities and schools were present with the vice chancellors of various universities such as Gwanda State University and the National University of Science and Technology addressing the pupils.
The Deputy Minister of Higher and Tertiary Education, Innovation, Science and Technology Development Raymore Machingura was also in attendance.
Pupils who attended the education exhibition said there was a lot to learn from the different educationalists.
They urged organisers of the exhibition to hold more similar events during the course of the year instead of waiting for the Zimbabwe International Trade Fair.
Bulawayo Junior Minister of State for Provincial Affairs and Devolution Thabiso Jubane said he was amazed by this year’s indaba where pupils got career guidance from different vice chancellors.
He said the information shared was critical as pupils were still at the stage where they had not decided what career paths to take.
The junior minister said the theme also made it easy for young people his age to relate because of the current digital age and the relevance of the topics around the theme.
“We got to see a lot of projects that are being done by young people. That alone is motivation for us to also make an effort and embrace innovation in a good way,” he said.
Another student, Dalitso Mukamba, who is a Junior Council member said this was his first year attending the indaba and urged his fellow youths to take advantage of such events.
He said because a lot of schools from different communities will be at one event, it becomes easy for everyone to network and share ideas on how best they can tackle day to day problems affecting them.
“It’s been a great event and rubbing shoulders with such highly esteemed officials also made it easy for us to get all the information we needed. I’m happy with how they gave us information about which career paths we can choose, different topical issues like artificial intelligence and of course entrepreneurship and how we can use readily available resources,” said Mukamba.
Deputy Minister Machingura said students should focus on how they can use their education for global competitiveness.
He said this can only be done if students are highly educated so that they understand technology and what it brings to the table.
Deputy Minister Machingura said by focusing on education, students can give themselves the capability to produce goods and services that are required and accepted by society.
“With this in mind, we transformed our education so that it answers human needs through adopting a mindset of producing goods and services that our society and country requires. We reconsidered our education design from Education 3.0 which was a colonial system of education to heritage based Education 5.0 which has added innovation through science parks and innovation hubs that have been developed across the country,” he said. — @flora_sibanda
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