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Leonard Ncube, Victoria Falls Reporter
Ministry of Primary and Secondary Education permanent secretary, Mrs Tumisang Thabela has said the country’s education framework is a benchmark for Africa’s spirit of Ubuntu as it helps promote the principle of togetherness on the continent.
Mrs Thabela made the remarks during the Strategic Choices for Education Reform in Eastern and Southern Africa (SCER) workshop in Victoria Falls.
The regional education workshop, which is being hosted by the Ministry of Primary and Secondary Education and funded by the World Bank, is being attended by representatives from more than 20 countries.
“Our people are humble and hospitable due to their belief in the values of love, kindness and ubuntu/unhu/humanism the ‘I am because you are’ principle, which happens to be the underlying philosophy of our country’s curriculum framework,” she said.
“It also is a common shared African principle which has seen us over our long history as peoples of this continent who believe in caring for one another and investing in social capital.”
Mrs Thabela extended the Government’s gratitude to the World Bank and Global Partnership for Education for selecting Zimbabwe to be the inaugural host of the SCER regional learning event.
She also conveyed a solidarity message to the people of Somalia whose education headquarters in Mogadishu were bombed recently causing significant damages and multiple injuries.
Mrs Thabela said despite the setback, the people of Somalia managed to attend the event.
“I would like to thank the Office of the President and Cabinet as represented here by the Office of the Chief Secretary, for giving us as the Ministry of Primary and Secondary Education the green light to co-host this event with the World Bank and the Global Partnership for Education (GPE). It is indeed a strategic partnership that has given birth to a learning event that is expected to be a recurring occasion on our calendar within the East and Southern Africa Region,” she said.
“As the inaugural host, planning and organising this event with the World Bank local office has provided a learning opportunity to us and we hope to learn a lot from our colleagues from the different countries here represented, both during formal sessions and beyond. ”
Mrs Thabela said the SCER event comes at an opportune moment not only for Zimbabwe but for Africa as a whole as it comes on the backdrop of the Transforming Education Summit that ran on the sidelines of the 2022 UN General Assembly in September this year. The Transforming Education Summit sought to bring education to the centre of the global political agenda.
It also aimed at mobilising action, commitment and solutions to recover the pandemic-related learning losses and sow the seeds of transforming education in a rapidly changing and unpredictable world. -@ncubelon
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