adminI am honoured to stand before you to introduce the Honourable Vice President Mphoko to address us on this very important day to those of us in the Higher and Tertiary Education, Science and Technology Development sector and I would like to remind us that the reason we are here is to announce the winners in the various categories among the students who enrolled for A-Level STEM subjects in 2016 and their schools.I would like to remind you that there are two grand prizes, one is a STEMITISED bus which is parked outside and I hope as you were coming in you saw it. If you want to know what a STEMITISED bus is, please take a look, you are welcome even to board the bus.
The second grand prize is $100 000 and this will go to a school and hopefully a school that needs the money and the money will specifically support infrastructure related to STEM and this will be strictly enforced. It’s not cash for running expenses but for capacitating the winning school. If not towards the infrastructure building expenses, for example, it is intended to support equipment acquisition.
So this is really a day to announce the winners, not to give them the $100 000 or to give them the bus. We are going to keep the bus after the occasion today. There will be another occasion when both the bus and $100 000 would be actually given to winners. And as you know, 10 students — one each from our ten provinces — stand to win a trip of a lifetime to Silicon Valley companies in California,
To Page B12
‘STEM at the heart of our mandate’ Prof Moyo
From Page B10
America.
Another 100 students stand a chance to win a laptop, a STEMITISED laptop, and these would be 10 each from the country’s provinces and finally another 100 stand to win Ipads and that would be ten each from the 10 provinces.
Now, ladies and gentlemen, it’s important for me to take this opportunity as I introduce the Honourable Vice President to remind you what the principal mandate of the Ministry of Higher Education Science and Technology Development is. This mandate is derived from the Manpower Planning and Development Act and it is for the Ministry to plan, develop and train human capital for the country’s entire economy.
This is a mandate derived from the Manpower Planning and Development Act to train and develop the critical human skills that our economy needs and these skills are not permanently fixed, they change from time to time and you would be aware that His Excellency, the President, in his capacity as chairperson of SADC announced industrialisation policy for SADC and its members and this is an industry strategy for Zimbabwe and other members of SADC which was adopted last year.
That policy means that our country must prepare itself for industrialisation and as such it means we must now plan, develop, and train human capital skills for the industrialisation of Zimbabwe and the most import skills that our country needs for its industrialisation are STEM skills. No STEM, no industrialisation!
We have seen from the debate that is going on since the launch of the programme that there are some people who believe that pure Science, that is Mathematics, Physics, Biology and Chemistry equal STEM. That if you have taken these subjects it means you are STEMITISED. That is very wrong because if this is true, even Isaac Newton was STEMITISED.
In order to have the STEM skills that are required for our industrialisation, our compatriots must have the necessary foundation for the training of those skills and the necessary foundations are these pure Science subjects, Mathematics Physics, Chemistry and Biology and especially Mathematics. But if you have one or a combination of these, I repeat, it does not mean you are STEMITISED.
In the acronym, STEM, the first letter “S” is common, it is the summary that speaks to Physics, Chemistry, Biology and the last letter “M”, for Mathematics, is also very, very important; it affects all fields whether they are STEM fields or non-STEM fields. But what is STEMITIC in STEM is not these subjects, it is the “T” and “E”, the Technology and Engineering. That’s what is STEM, Technology and Engineering, not simply Physics, Chemistry and Biology on one hand or Mathematics on the other.
We are hearing a lot of people running around saying they are doing STEM, simply because they are teaching these pure subjects, that’s wrong. These subjects have been taught since time immemorial and what our country critically needs is the “T” and “E” which is Applied Science, technological and engineering solutions to the challenges that our country faces, Technology and Engineering solutions that will ensure the industrialisation of our country.
When we say we are STEMITISING, we are talking about transforming our Higher and Tertiary Education institutions to ensure that they all do Applied Science but in order for them to do that, they must get students who are wholly grounded in Applied Science which would then make it possible for them to engage in the STEMITISED degree subjects and career paths.
What are the careers of the future?
We must answer this question with urgency in order to ensure that by 2018, our tertiary institutions are prepared for the STEM degrees which would lead to STEM careers to enable our country to become industrialised.
Then there are those who claim there are a lot of STEM graduates roaming the streets. It’s not true! There are students with pure Sciences and students with all sorts of other degrees who will need to be STEMITISED to be relevant to the industrialisation thrust of the country.
Now, there is no way for us to start except with the students who have taken their O-Levels. We agree with the view that we must have a holistic approach which those who are of that view say demands that we start at ECD or infant level; we agree with that view but we hope that those with that view will also respect the division of labour.
In that scheme of division of labour under which the tasks are assigned by His Excellency, the President, our labour is to plan, develop and train human capital skills. We cannot do that by going to the infant level, that’s not our job. It’s somebody else’s job and we hope they do their job and we are prepared to support them in that regard.
Our job necessarily starts with O-Level school leavers who are now out there going into the labour market, who are thinking careers; who are thinking what degree to pursue; what diploma; and some who directly seek enrolment at our tertiary institutions — the polytechnics and teachers’ colleges — and a privileged few who go on to A-Level in order to prepare for university.
We are particularly interested in that group, and because you must start somewhere, we have decided to start with the 2016 A-Level class in order to respond to the challenges that Professor Mwenje shared with you where the enrolment at our science universities has dramatically gone down. Dramatical in ways that have left these universities not pursuing STEM subjects, not even pure sciences. You heard that in some cases they can’t even get 30 students in a Physics or Mathematics class.
But we are not even talking about that, we are talking about people who can do software engineering, people who can do reverse engineering, people who can create new knowledge and have us patent that new knowledge as Zimbabwe’s intellectual property.
Our universities don’t have these students. The National University Science Technology was created as a science university, a technology university, a STEM university, but it has been a university for commercial studies. The graduates coming out of that university have not been STEMITISED, they are not even pure science students. Ask them ‘why?’
The answer that they have given us and the answer they gave His Excellency the President at their graduation ceremony last year is that they can’t find the students.
Those who say there are a lot of students with six points or two points (roaming the streets), well we don’t take them because we have very high standards, we want 15 points and we know we produce them and when we produce them with requisite pure science qualifications they get targeted for recruitment by foreign universities. How do we come up with a targeted initiative to work with these students? That’s our challenge.
In the case of A-Level students, we want to introduce them to university life while they are still doing their A-Level. So we can’t start last year because we missed the boat. We must start this year and as we start this year, we understand that it takes no less than seven years to educate a STEMITISED engineer. It takes at least 10 years for that STEMITISED engineer to become relevant in the production of engineering and technological solutions needed by society. So we are starting this Initiative in 2016 with a clear understanding that we should expect results only in 2026.
To those who say we must start at infant level, well if their programme starts next year, they must know that it takes 16 years for that infant to go through A-Level and it’s going to be 2033 when that infant is relevant to society in terms of coming up with technological and engineering solutions.
We are impatient; we don’t want to wait until 2033. Our country needs solutions today! His Excellency President Mugabe recognised this and it is for that reason why you have, ladies and gentlemen, the Ministry of Higher and Tertiary Education, Science and Technology Development as of 2013. These were separate ministries until then and the reason His Excellency put these ministries together was not so that they can co-exist under one roof and have no relationship to one another, it was in order to ensure that Higher and Tertiary education in Zimbabwe is driven by and based on science and technology. That’s is visionary leadership because since then, the African Union has followed suit and advised that ministries of higher and tertiary education science and technology development must be merged in order to
prepare the agenda for STEMITISED programmes that respond with real solutions to present day challenges.
That is what we are responding to, we are not engaged in a campaign, it’s not a fad, it is implementing a directive from our principal and that is why we are taking our work very seriously.
We know that it is very difficult because as you know, many of our schools at O-Level and A-Level are not ready to prepare and produce STEM compliant students for reasons we all know. As you heard, I come from Matabeleland North, the province with the lowest uptake (of the STEM school fees programme) with 125 students. The Minister of Higher and Tertiary Education had the lowest number of students! As if that is not bad enough, the deputy minister of Higher and Tertiary Education (Dr Godfrey Gandawa) comes from a province that came second last (Mashonaland West).
If you ask why, it’s because there are no science schools there, so we understand this challenge and we cannot deal with this challenge by ignoring these students and say we will come and deal with them after we have addressed that challenge. That would be irresponsible and we don’t want to be counted among the irresponsible.
But we have to solve this problem; we have the teachers colleges that are represented here including universities like the Bindura University of Science Education that are preparing science teachers. The Government has a clear policy which the Ministry of Primary and Secondary Education is implementing — that of equipping these schools.
We used to have a policy, ladies and gentleman: that you should not build a school if it does not have a laboratory, but there are schools all over without such laboratories. Minister Kasukuwere (Local Government) knows that land barons that are creating all sorts of illegal settlements are creating schools and those schools don’t have labs, they can’t teach science and yet there are many such. Some are in the recently resettled farming communities. We have to respond to such challenges, but while we are doing that, we have found it necessary to come up with a critical mass.
Yes, a critical mass of pioneering STEM students and we will make sure, thanks to Zimdef which is also under the Manpower Planning and Development Act, that these students will be supported throughout their STEMITIC education which means at least seven years.
It’s a targeted group and we hope that this group will, as they say, pay back to society what society would have paid them; not by bonding them. We want them to feel committed and to understand that it is exciting to work for your country without being bonded and this is the approach that we are going to take.
We are here against this background to celebrate and incentivise these students as they embark on what we think is an exciting journey. We feel privileged and honoured to have Vice President Mphoko with us, mainly because he is our boss in the Ministry. The Ministries have Vice Presidents who supervise them. We are supervised by Vice President Mphoko as a Ministry at the policy level, so we are here with our supervisor. Is this not it a good thing?
I say this because I was in the media and I know journalists ask a lot of questions, ‘why is Vice President Mphoko there?’ He is here because he is our supervisor and this is his programme!
CKD MM
Peter Tanyanyiwa
Online Reporter