adminDr Lazarus Dokora
Education is fundamental to personal and national development. It provides a myriad of life opportunities, and also underpins the development of a highly-skilled and innovative workforce which is critical for social, cultural and economic growth. The Ministry of Primary and Secondary Education remains committed to fulfilling the potential of learners in Zimbabwe.
Emphasis will be given to providing improved access and quality education to every learner. This will subsequently contribute to bringing meaningful change in the lives of ordinary Zimbabweans.
Our education system has provided today’s generation with knowledge, skills and a hybrid of attitudes that have driven the country‘s growth and prosperity. At the centre of this phenomenal growth and achievement are thousands of dedicated teachers, school heads, administrators, officers and staff at the Ministry of Primary and Secondary Education, both past and present, whose contribution can never be overstated.
The nation has realised a dramatic improvement to the quality and provision of education since Independence in 1980.
The achievements such as the high literacy level of 92,4 percent were realised through stakeholder collaborative efforts.
Rural district councils, parents and multi-lateral organisations such as Unicef and Unesco made significant contributions in their own way to this celebrated success.
The mandate of the Ministry of Primary and Secondary Education is to provide a wholesome education for all Zimbabweans. The education system should also be accessible, affordable and enable citizens to participate in the socio-economic transformation of the nation.
It was for this reason that the ministry adopted a strategy to engage all sections of Zimbabwean society to develop a shared vision, “To be the lead provider of inclusive quality education for socio-economic transformation by 2020”.
In order to accomplish the vision, the ministry adopted the following mission statement, “To provide equitable, quality, inclusive and relevant infant Junior and Secondary Education”.
Curriculum review
Zimbabwe’s national economic frameworks have always embraced the vision of producing patriotic, self-reliant and well-educated Zimbabweans.
In the same manner, the Zimbabwe Agenda for Sustainable Socio-Economic Transformation calls for the development of a curriculum which is relevant to national needs while equipping learners with life skills for work and leisure.
The Curriculum Framework is the consolidation of views of almost a million people representing the generality of Zimbabweans in different walks of life.
The national Constitution and the reviewed economic policies, which advocate for the transformation of the education system to meet the opportunities and challenges of the growing economy, inspire this Curriculum Framework.
A key priority for this transformation is to ensure better alignment between policy formulation and its implementation in the education system.
Another priority is to improve the resource base and strengthen the link between desired outcomes and effective allocation of resources.
There is need for effective implementation and evaluation of programmes and projects.
The Curriculum Framework provides for greater autonomy, accountability and flexibility in delivering solutions and is tailored to meet the unique needs of each learner.
Effective implementation will require constructive networking with stakeholders across Government agencies, parents, community groups and the private sector.
The 1999 Presidential Commission of Inquiry into Education and Training defines curriculum as “the aggregate of all what we (want to) impart to our learners, through the total experiences of the school system in a deliberate design to achieve educational goals”.
The curriculum therefore should include:
What society would like to pass on to young people as knowledge, skills and values,
The development of aptitudes and interests of learners,
Possibilities for adjustments
The decision to develop this Curriculum Framework was necessitated by:
the growing urgency amongst policy-makers and educators to adequately prepare Zimbabwean learners for the 21st Century,
increased public and parental concerns regarding the relevance of the Curriculum,
necessity to respond to the needs of industry and commerce trends in global education standards.
The curriculum in Zimbabwe since colonial times has tended to be overly academic. However, the trend today is to pay increased attention to competency development, that is, learners’ ability to mobilise their knowledge, skills and attitudes independently and creatively to address different challenges.
There is, therefore, need to constantly adjust the curriculum to meet the imperatives of the times.
This is more so given that Zimbabwe is an agro-based economy.
In the 1999-2000 period, Zimbabwe undertook an unprecedented land reform which witnessed relocation of more than 300 000 families.
Furthermore, Zimbabwe has experienced an exponential growth of the informal sector over the past decade or so.
It is against this background that Government took a decision to carry out a curriculum review to ensure the curriculum is responsive to the socio-economic needs of the country.
Due to rapid technological and social developments over the last three decades, access to information, knowledge, especially through ICT, is now virtually unlimited.
This has resulted in greater access to depositories of information and knowledge hubs worldwide.
The knowledge sector has increasingly become an important means of wealth generation, hence the need for regular curriculum renewal in order to maximise on opportunities.
This virtually unlimited access to information has created new contexts and demands for teachers. Teachers are no longer seen as the sole sources of knowledge and information.
They are now expected to help learners develop competencies to access and process information independently and responsibly, as well as to develop broader life skills.
The changing role of teachers is provided for in this curriculum framework. Teachers become facilitators of learning.
There has been an enormous change in educational theory and practice in the last three decades. A discussion on the provision of basic education leads to a reconsideration of some of the emerging trends in education.
Developing nations, like any of their counterparts elsewhere, must necessarily invest in education to embrace benefits from pedagogical and curricular shifts.
Zimbabwe’s participation in a new global economy is premised on an education system with a science, technology, engineering, arts and mathematics (Steam/Stem) bias.
To empower Zimbabweans for effective citizenry and employment for the 21st Century, a great responsibility falls on the education system to educate well and to educate all.
School institutions need to engage learners with renewed focus on Stem so that they can thrive in a knowledge-based economy and society.
In fact, research findings (Wagner, 2012) show that Stem education empowers learners with the most important skills that they need in order to be productive citizens.
Such skills include:
critical thinking and problem-solving
collaboration and leading with influence
agility and adaptability
taking initiative and being enterprising
effective oral and written communication skills
capability to access and analyse information.
Provision of these skills would prepare learners to take part and contribute meaningfully to the exciting economies of the future.
A coherent philosophical value system is the hallmark of a sound education system. Such a system orients learners towards national development and the improvement of their own surroundings and communities.
The Presidential Commission of Enquiry into Education and Training underscored the need for the education system to be underpinned by a philosophy of Ubuntu/Unhu/Vumunhu.
Consequently, such a system should offer learners experiences and opportunities that nurture self-actualisation, promote a sense of community and patriotism.
Early Reading Initiative (ERI) and Performance Lag Address Programme (PLAP)
The organisation of the school curriculum spans the years from Infant (Early Childhood Development) to Secondary School.
The curriculum is organised in cycles, namely infant school cycle, junior school cycle and secondary school cycle.
The Infant cycle includes ECD A, ECD B and Grades One and Two, while Junior school runs from Grade Three to Seven.
Together, the infant and junior school modules constitute primary education. Transition to secondary education follows formal completion of junior school education.
As a way of enhancing quality, the Ministry introduced Early Reading Initiative (ERI) in the infant school and Performance Lag Address Programme (PLAP) in the Junior school.
The ERI in Zimbabwe seeks to strengthen the skills of infant class teachers and supervisors from Early Childhood Development Year 1 to Grade 2.
It also improves teaching, supervision and assessment of learners’ reading and writing skills as well as increasing chances of all-round academic achievement of learners.
Reading forms the basis of all areas of learning. It is an essential skill for success in school and in life and impacts learner performance in all subjects in the later years. It is therefore important that ECD teachers ensure learners are engaged in early reading activities as early as possible.
This can be done by developing their pre-writing and pre-reading skills which lays a strong reading literacy foundation. The beneficiaries of the initiative are infant teachers and learners from ECD A to Grade 2.
PLAP is a catch-up strategy that strengthens educational skills for teachers to close the performance gap among affected learners. The strategy requires that teachers establish the level of performance of each learner. Teachers then proceed with the individualised teaching and learning strategy, going back to the last point of success of each child and systematically closing the achievement gap.
The approach is not an isolated intervention strategy but should be complementary to any other techniques that are already in use. The ultimate goal, however, is on improving the performance of the learner who is experiencing learning achievement gaps so that he or she catches up with others.
Emphasis is on yielding rapid results (Quick Wins) through teaching strategies and methodologies to improve and sustain the learner’s ability to perform better.
The philosophy behind PLAP is that all learners have some knowledge of what happened in the previous level and hence can pick up from the last point of success and improve, with the assistance of the teacher.
Learners are expected to make significant and notable progress within a short period of time. PLAP seeks to support all learners to achieve age-appropriate learning outcomes.
School Feeding Programme
The Ministry of Primary and Secondary Education recognises the importance of school feeding and the School Feeding Programme (SFP) has been included in the fiscal budget for the Ministry.
Since the 2010 budget, the Government of Zimbabwe, through Treasury, has allocated funds to the Ministry annually for the School Feeding Programme. Hitherto school feeding efforts, however, have been intermittent and require more coordination and broad-based participation to ensure sustainability.
Partner support has often been fragmented and concentrated in specific geographical regions, thereby leaving other areas without support.
Given the high number of indigent learners in schools, who are well over one million, it became imperative to come up with an effective and sustainable programme to provide at least one ‘wet’ meal for learners at school.
While other School Feeding Models additionally provide take home rations for learners, the cost-effective approach in Zimbabwe is the feed-at-school model.
If this objective is to be fully achieved, there will be need for a school feeding model where food for the learners is sourced from the school and local communities in order to build a sustainable school feeding programme.
The vision of the Ministry in this respect is to impact positively on the socio-economic development of the communities surrounding our schools in a win-win partnership, with communities marketing their products to the schools to support school-feeding.
School feeding is an essential tool for the development and growth of children.
School feeding has many demonstrable advantages, but it has its greatest impact among learners who receive sufficient nutrition to allow them to concentrate on school tasks while developing into healthy adults.
If stalked by hunger, or unbalanced diets, the impact is similar — poor programme.
Food support to learners becomes a strategic investment that can make a difference to the future of all the learners and consequently the contribution they can make to their country.
School feeding has been proved to have a positive impact on attendance at school, improved learning outcomes and improved health, gender equity, and poverty and hunger reduction, among others factors.
Zimbabwe, with our agro-based economy, we have the potential and capacity to implement a viable school feeding programme.
The ministry launched the school home grown feeding program and every primary school is supposed to feed its learners. The programme is being launched in all provinces and districts.
A task force composed of several Ministries is spearheading an intersectorial approach.
Stakeholders like the WFP,Unicef and FAO are also involved.
The Zimbabwe School Examinations Council (Zimsec) has been at the centre of Zimbabwe’s education sector, providing excellent, value driven, educational assessment and responsive awarding systems since 1995.
The council has over the years played a vital role in assessing the learners of this country. The assessment is based on the learning areas that are offered by the Ministry of Primary and Secondary Education.
In line with the new curriculum framework for primary and secondary education, Zimsec has the mandate to assess our learners taking on board the new assessment procedures that include continuous assessment.
So far, Zimsec has pilot tested agriculture, which is one of the new learning areas for primary education.
Dr Lazarus Dokora is the Minister of Primary and Secondary Education. He wrote this article for The Sunday Mail.
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