Industrial attachment for O-Levels

04 Oct, 2015 - 00:10 0 Views

The Sunday Mail

Debra Matabvu
Starting from January next year, all Ordinary Level students will be required to attend a five-month industrial attachment after completing their November examinations. The five-month industrial attachment programme will see the academic calendar for Advanced Level students being shortened to 16 months, with Lower 6 classes beginning in May instead of March.

Those who fail to undergo the five-month programme will not proceed to either Advanced Level or any college of tertiary learning as the industrial attachment will conclude Ordinary Level.

These developments are part of the curriculum framework that was recently adopted by Cabinet and will guide the education sector for the next seven years.

The issue of industrial attachment has been met with a lot of mixed reactions over the past months with some education experts commending Government for the programme while parents, teachers and students remain sceptical about the whole education blueprint.

The work-related learning programme will be compulsory and it aims to give learners the opportunities to acquire practical education as well as the general skills expected in a working environment.

The programme will see learners working in hospitals, uniformed forces’ departments, schools, private institutions, engaging in volunteerism and acquiring driving skills.

Speaking to The Sunday Mail Extra last week, Deputy Minister of Primary and Secondary Education, Professor Paul Mavhima, said the programme was meant to instil a sense of responsibility in learners.

“The programme is mandatory and those who fail to complete the programme will not be viewed as having completed Ordinary Level,” he said.
“They will work in hospitals, uniformed forces’ departments, schools and private institutions for five months after the last day of examinations.

“We want to instil a sense of pride and responsibility in our children and when they are integrated into these different institutions, they are no longer learners but they become part of the institutions. In doing this, we are instilling a sense of responsibility and pride and they learn different life skills,” he added.

The new curriculum comes into effect next January, with the aim of adjusting and aligning the existing education practices with emerging national and global socio-economic trends. Shifts will be made from content-based curricula to competency-based curricula with the latter strongly focusing on the learners’ capacity to apply knowledge and skills in a practical way.

The new education framework has seen Government introducing subjects such as Physical Education, Heritage Studies and indigenous and foreign languages as well as practical and vocational subjects.
Agriculture and Heritage Studies will be introduced at Grade 7 next year.

The director of Curriculum Development and Technical Services in the Ministry of Primary and Secondary Education, Dr Arthur Makanda, said they were working on crafting on syllabi of all subjects across the education sector.

Dr Makanda, however, said the roll-out of the new syllabi will be done in phases after extensive consultations within the Ministry.
“By end of November, we are hoping that we would have finished with all the syllabi prototype of all subjects at all levels and then we will present the concept paper to the Ministry,” he said.

“The Ministry will then decide which subjects are to be introduced first at all levels and by end of 2018, the new curriculum will have been fully rolled out.”

He said that the Ministry is yet to deliberate on the number of new stand-alone subjects to be introduced into the education sector.
“We have introduced a lot of new subjects but we are to see the number of subjects that will be introduced as stand-alone subjects and those that will be incorporated into other subjects,” he added.

“There are subjects such as Agriculture which have already been in schools but were being neglected, these may be incorporated in General Paper at junior primary level or may be made stand-alone subjects.”

However, some education experts feel the progress of the new curriculum may be slowed by human resources capacity in the country. s0Progressive Teachers Union in Zimbabwe (PTUZ) president, Dr Takavafira Zhou, said lack of consultations and engagement from some sections of the society was likely to create resistance for the blueprint.

Dr Zhou said there was need for extensive training of teachers in both training institutions and those already in the profession.
“At the moment, teachers are divorced from what is happening and we hear the curriculum is going to be implemented beginning next January,” he said.

“New Grade 7 syllabi are ready for next year whilst syllabi for other levels are still being crafted when teachers both at training institutions and those in the profession are not trained in line with the new curriculum.”

However, Professor Mavhima said the teacher capacity building programme introduced by the Government in 2014 would capacitate teachers and help them contribute to the curriculum effectively.

“The teacher capacity building programme is one of the many programmes that Government introduced to cater for technical and vocational needs that educators need to be in sync with the new curriculum,” he highlighted.

“The programme is meant to upgrade teacher qualifications as it covers a wide range of disciplines including sciences, mathematics, curriculum research and development, education planning, technical and vocational education, languages and humanities.

“We also have other programmes for teachers that will upgrade teacher qualifications that are in the pipeline.”
The curriculum will be implemented in three phases with the implementation stage being done this year while some subjects will be introduced at primary school level next year to 2017. The secondary school subjects will then be introduced from 2017 to 2018. Extensive monitoring and evaluation of the programme will be done from 2018 to 2022.

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