The Sunday Mail
Tinashe Farawo
ABOUT 100 schools in different parts of Zimbabwe have switched to the new education curriculum that comes on stream in January 2017, with selected grades and forms participating. This pilot project was rolled out in the latter part of the second 2016 school term and will run up to November.
It involves early childhood learning, Grades 1 and 3, and Forms 1, 3 and 5, with Prince Edward High (Harare), Eveline High (Bulawayo), St Columbus (Mutasa), Chaplin High (Gweru), Avondale Primary (Harare) and Kriste Mambo High (Manicaland) figuring among the prominent participating schools.
Primary and Secondary Education Minister Dr Lazarus Dokora told The Sunday Mail that Zimbabwe’s education system will now have three learning levels: Infants (ECD to Grade 2), juniors (Grades 3 to 7) and secondary school.
The first level, he said, emphasises foundational learning skills and then junior school reinforces those skills, providing life and work techniques.
Secondary school prepares learners for university and technical training.
“We are already in the pilot phase of the new curriculum, and next year, we are going to start the second phase (which runs) until 2022.
‘‘In 2017, we will be implementing a new curriculum in ECD, ECD A, and other grades.
“What we have done is come up with a document that speaks to the realities of the day because what our children were learning was outdated.”
Government is introducing a new curriculum to align education with psychomotor training and life skills that are lacking in the present highly academic system.
The coming dispension focuses on orientation such as financial literacy, entrepreneurship and information communication technology literacy, and will lean more towards science, technology, engineering and mathematics.
It will promote use of indigenous languages at early learning stages to equip learners linguistically.
At least one million people participated in the formulation of the curriculum.
Minister Dokora said, “There is need for a transformative education system predicated on a shift from a content-based and examination-driven curriculum to a competency and skills-based curriculum, grounded on both continuous school-based assessment and public examinations.
“Our students must be imbued with unhu/ubuntu/vumunhu, with capacity to participate in socio-economic transformation in line with the Zim-Asset economic blue-print and the nation’s quest for self-reliance.
“Learning areas or subjects for study have to mainstream heritage and unhu/ubuntu education concepts for cultural literacy and societal values. In addition, competence or skills-based learning should be embedded in the learning areas with emphasis on innovativeness and creativity, problem solving, entrepreneurship, social skills, ICT literacy and financial literacy, among other skills.”
