The Sunday Mail
Veronica Gwaze
Secondary school pupils will no longer be compelled to conduct subject-based tasks introduced in the new curriculum with Government saying the added activities were a burden to learners, Primary and Secondary Education Minister Professor Paul Mavima has said.
The new curriculum introduced in 2017 said pupils should complete a task per subject every term.
Speaking to The Sunday Mail, Prof Mavima said: “We have totally scrapped the issue of tasks, so we are saying we are not going to have tasks anymore in our schools. These tasks are not part of the syllabus, from my study and even if one would look at our syllabus, it has no tasks.
“Above all, the tasks were too much a burden to both the students and the teachers because if a learner is doing 10 subjects, they are required to do at least one task per subject meaning its 10 tasks for the 10 subjects per term or simply 30 tasks per year.”
The minister said many schools had a high teacher-pupil ratio, making supervision of the tasks cumbersome.
Last week, Government also partially suspended continuous assessment of pupils. Under this, pupils would have been graded on the basis of combined marks for continuous assessment and final examinations.
Prof Mavima said continuous assessment had been waived for examination classes and not forms one, three and lower sixers undertaking projects to be completed over two years.
“We are keeping the projects because they bring in an element of practicality, but now they are to be done over two years, meaning form ones will finish their projects at form two, form threes will finish at form four and lower sixes finish at upper six.”
The minister also said the subject load would be adjusted.
“We are going to compress the curriculum, especially for lower levels, because the learning areas are too much for them. We need to combine some of the subjects like Physical Education, Mass Sisplays and Sport.
“They will be combined such that as they do Physical Education they can also incorporate an aspect of Mass Displays so some of these subjects will be rolled into one. This reduces the burden on both the teachers and the learners.”
