Why CALA is key to educational progress

Simbarashe Maringosi, Sunday News Correspondent
A coin, once tossed, has two possible results that may emanate from that single toss.
The result may turn out to be a head or a tails. In life, many of our decisions or actions embrace the same fate, it’s either you rub your hands with glee or you swim in the sombre ocean of regret, remorse and compunction.

What could be the case with Continuous Assessment Learning Activity (CALA)? Is it rich in blessings that have conveyed success for many or it is a curse that has taken many into the dungeons of failure due to a myriad of hurdles?

Tomorrow (Monday), schools will open their doors for the new academic year and pupils will also have to be ready for their CALA. Many views have been paraded and the discourse still rages on as the current crop of students currently contemplating on partaking their Zimbabwe School Examinations Council (Zimsec) examinations have not been spared from the thorn in the flesh or blessing in disguise!

In the spirit of trying to avoid being unreasonable or defiant over the matter that has irked the majority of parents, this subject requires careful analysis so as to draw a robust conclusion that fuses many facets, perspectives and thoughts that holistically encompass and represent the Zimbabwean society.

Some parents and students have observed the initiative as a noble gesture bent on inculcating research skills at a very tender age but some have vehemently dismissed this initiative as an unnecessary burden worthy of being discarded as it was ill conceived and does not spare one’s pocket.

Important to note before delving further into the crux of our subject is the fact that the Zimbabwean education system is one of the most revered in the continent and the country has scored positively with regard to the literacy rate.

Many highly effective educational policies have been implemented post-independence to the marvel of the populace including the recently launched Education 5.0 which is anchored on five pillars that include teaching, research, community services, innovation and industrialisation.

The CALA system seeks to support the Education 5.0 tremendously. CALAs according to Zimsec are, “various learning activities or assessments that require students to conduct detailed research-based activities in areas where they incorporate practical activities such as data collection through interviews, questionnaires, checklists, observations, and experiments.”

Furthermore, Zimsec indicates that every student is mandated to complete five CALAs over two years and the scenarios for the research-based activities are crafted, assessed, and marked by teachers.

The major thrust of this programme is driven by the desire to produce students who are solution-oriented. This move is never to the detriment of any progressive society as it inculcates the ethos of being problem solvers to the society’s subjects.

The 21st century requires skills for work and life such as critical thinking and collaboration. These are some of the pros engrossed in student’s faculties when the CALA system of learning is effectively implemented. Moreso, self-sufficiency is infused and fortified in students.

The CALA system is not only peculiar to Zimbabwe as other nations have embraced this 21st education innovative policy. Argentina and Tunisia are among the notable case in points with many sub-Saharan countries poised to follow suit in this honourable drive.

The CALA system is central and plays a paramount role in delivering quality education at a very broad scale nationally in Zimbabwe. The proper administration of the CALA system is tantamount to re-inventing the wheel for an entire nation of school children.

This re-invention of the wheel needs supporting systems in order for success of stupendous proportions to be registered. Supporting systems like technology are central. The world that we live in has, in all reasonable terms, embraced the use of technology.

We have but truly transitioned into a digital era as the analogue era has vanished into thin air in the twinkling of an eye. The use of the CALA system tries to harness the positives that may be deciphered from various technologies that punctuate the digital world we have become citizens to.

As alluded earlier, Zimbabwe’s Education 5.0 seeks to employ tools like science, technology and innovation in imparting knowledge. The CALA system thus comes in handy in the execution of this ambitious yet achievable drive.

Through the use of technology, high quality education may be a perennial harvest for Zimbabwe’s education system. We may be flooded by the plethora benefits that are brought about by technology in the education sector.

However, a question may be posed if these benefits are being gleaned by all and sundry in Zimbabwe as a whole. Many factors have interrupted the CALA system technologically. Matters to do with connectivity challenges, network problems, data costs and electricity availability may be brought to the fore.

In order for high quality education to be achieved through the embracing of the CALA system, both the Government and the private sector have to partner in alleviating these ills as they have grossly hampered the success of the CALA system especially for rural students who don’t have an equal footing compared to their urban counterparts.

The Constitution of Zimbabwe [Section 56(1)] encapsulates the right to equality. This equality has to permeate to the education fraternity as some students ostensibly are being awarded an unfair advantage over others. The giving out of laptops and computers by the Second Republic is a bold step in the right direction in empowering students technologically across the length and breath of Zimbabwe equally. Analogue technologies have become archaic in a world that grapples with fast moving technology.

The CALA system is rich and endowed with the benefit of creating an environment where three parties all work together to achieve a common academic goal. The learner, the teacher and the parent all cuddle the task of researching various matters.

They are also guided into the use of research tools which include the use of questionnaires, interviews and observations in order to gather the needed evidence for a given task.

Parents thus play the supervisory role in the quest of ensuring that this education process becomes a success. Learners are then not alienated in this academic expedition as they have both the support of their parents and their teachers.

This fundamentally reduces the stakes of failure by great and well-pronounced margins.

The challenge posed by this scenario is that many times, it is the parents that end up doing the work for their children. The learners thus become inert and passive in a process that is meant to engage their maximum participation.

Many parents and teachers included have abused and defiled this magnanimous education system. There have been reported incidents where teachers have been on “CALA crusades” where they would incessantly solicit and be paid to do the CALAs for their students.

This unprofessional practice, an abomination to the teaching profession, has the pattern of smudging and or blotting the integrity of an examination body. It is a shadow that has left a huge dent to the teaching practice and the examination body.

The CALA system has thus been turned into a money-making scheme and the wings of such a practice have to be clipped.

The CALA system develops and implants skills and competencies that are crucial to a modern-day learner. It is a trajectory that equips any learner with practically-engaging skills that may be useful even post-secondary or high school education. Besides being taught how to conduct research, learners go to the extent of implementing what they would have gathered.

Knowledge implementation is very crucial in solving everyday problems in different fabrics of our societies. Today’s society doesn’t require book experts, those that swim and are soaked in humungous head knowledge that never tests any application. It requires people who are practical enough to apply acquired knowledge in solving real world challenges.

Creativity is applied by learners in trying to curb case problems presented to them. The creative problem-solving skill by learners helps them also to derive very important lessons from their learning. Vital skills like good decision-making, and information retention for future use are embedded in learners.

Active learning systems like the CALA help with knowledge retention. Research has shown that active learning helps in retention of 90 percent of messages or information. The CALA system subscribes to the notion or concept of active learning.

The CALA system is a hands-on learning method that places learners into real world mindsets where tools or competencies like imagination, independency and attention become essential.

These skills are not only useful during a learner’s secondary or high school education; they also prove to be greatly beneficial in one’s future ventures.

In as much as the CALA system envelops many merits, conversely, there are many challenges that this system has brought about. It is on record that there has been an abhorrence by students, teachers and parents when the CALA system was introduced.

Parents have shed tears for an aeon against this initiative. Their lamentations have done nothing to tame the policymakers as no reversal to the system was recorded. The major concern for many parents is the issue of an added cost to a shoe-string family budget.

The majority of parents earn meagre salaries and some of their salaries fall short below the poverty datum line. The CALA system demands parents to go out of their way in trying to meet the added educational demands for their children.

This again, as was alluded, presents the subject of having other students being awarded an unfair advantage as their parents have sustainable incomes. The rural students are again placed at a detrimental position. The paltry income earned by their parents jeopardises the quality of their CALA projects.

On the other side, teachers have been on record alluding to the fact that when the CALA system was introduced, no prior training was conducted. This, placed teachers in a position where they were inadequately prepared yet they had to execute a directive from the policy makers since they were in a compliant position. Moreover, moving away from the travesty of inadequately trained teachers, the CALA system brought about an increased work load for teachers. Teachers had to grapple with added tasks.

This becomes daylight horror if a teacher has many students falling under their guidance. It’s a carnage to all the verve that one will be clothed in at the beginning of the work day. All the energy vapours as one has to contend with many projects presented by students for supervision and marking.

Students joined the CALA system denial convocation by highlighting that the new learning system had inundated them with a lot of tasks to the point that they have scant time to attend to the task of sufficiently preparing for written exams.

The painstaking task of having to deal with five CALA projects or assignments per subject is a mammoth task that our learners have to contend with. This becomes a thorn in the flesh when a learner is doing many subjects especially at O-level. The task becomes highly unbearable.

In order to address the cons highlighted above, there is a need for the Second Republic to continue spearheading its Information and Communications Technology (ICT) drive by ensuring that there is a massive rural schools computerisation programme. The giving out of laptops and computers to rural schools is a plausible and strategic gesture.

This is buttressed by the Second Republic’s intensification of the rural electrification programme where power is brought to the classrooms where all the learning takes place. This noble drive places every rural learner at par with their urban counterparts as technology now vastly plays a mediatory role in the dispensing of education in today’s world.

All learners across the divide have to be technologically-equipped in order to harness all benefits associated with the use of technology. More resources have to be channelled towards funding this computerisation policy. Private players and parastatals in the ICT industry may also contribute immensely in this quest by ensuring that learners have access to highly affordable data.

All stakeholders need to be consulted in order for the CALA system to be reflective of the holistic needs of our society. Teachers who bear the brunt of having to mark or supervise many CALA projects need to be consulted. The CALA system can be enhanced if teachers are engaged in the CALA designing, implementation and dissemination of CALA.

This engagement may be done through unions or workshops. The learners who have to carry the burden of having to do many projects with high performance demands need to be consulted also.

Lastly, the parents that bear the financial cost of the CALA system also need to have an input in policy-making. The number of CALAs will for obvious reasons need to be reduced to a manageable number for both the teacher and the learner.

This will keep both parties highly motivated to achieve the tasks presented before them. A blessing or a curse?
Simbarashe Maringosi is an entrepreneur, author, poet, academic and a volunteer teacher at Faith Christian College in Bulawayo. He can be contacted on +263 713 621 228 or email address: [email protected]