The Sunday News
AT the beginning of this month, renowned educationist and Bulawayo provincial education director Mr Dan Moyo retired from his position, this after serving the education sector for 42 years.
Born on 27 December 1951 in Mnene in Mberengwa District, Mr Moyo has a rich curriculum vitae that makes him one of the most top notch educationist in the country whom even the Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Primary and Secondary Education Dr Sylvia Utete-Masango said he would be called upon for guidance even after he his retirement.
Having acquired a teacher’s secondary certificate in 1973 at the then Gweru Teachers’ College, Mr Moyo never looked back, accumulating a number of education related qualifications to boost his ever rich knowledge in the sector.
Starting off from the lowest rung as a teacher at Ihlathi High School in Tshabalala in 1974, he rose to become a head of subject department two years later.
He later became an acting school head at Mahlabezulu Upper Top after Independence before being moved to the desk job where he was an education officer (buildings) between 1981 and 1989.
Between 1989 and 1993 he was appointed education officer (planning). Due to his dedication to his job he was moved to head office in April 1993 where he held the position of deputy chief education officer, a position he held until January 1998 when he was promoted to become the deputy Matabeleland North regional director before becoming the acting Matabeleland North regional director in 2000. Mr Moyo became the Bulawayo provincial education director in October 2000.
Some of his qualifications include; a diploma in management and project planning (University of Brit, Colombia), Bachelor of Education (University of Zimbabwe), Master of Arts in Education (Linkoping University) and a Diploma in Educational Management from the University of Bristol.
His influence has not only been on the educational front as over the years his professionalism has seen him serve on a number of Government constituted commissions including the Presidential Land Review Committee and the Presidential Land Resettlement Committee.
Sunday News reporter, Vusumuzi Dube (VD) caught up with Mr Moyo (DM) last Wednesday where he expressed satisfication at the years he has served the country’s education sector, saying he was passing the baton to the next director a happy and satisfied man.
VD: Mr Moyo when you entered the education sector back in the 1970s how do you compare that period and the current one?
DM: When we grew up there were a lot of bottlenecks in the education system, for you to break through the numerous set barriers you had to be very intelligent at school. You would not also make it without the support of your parents. Very few blacks would go to university back then but the difference now is that the system has just opened up.
While we still have some pupils walking long distances to school, after the country attained its Independence the majority are now walking shorter distances. The only phenomenon which has occurred is in the resettlement areas, that’s where we have a problem. But to try and alleviate this problem we had to open satellite schools, which are satellite to existing schools.
Since the attainment of Independence, education has become more accessible to the people, even though there are some schools which are very far from the people.
VD: There has been a lot of developments in the sector, chief among them being the recent introduction of the new curriculum, what’s your take on this new curriculum?
DM: I am leaving education at a time that the country is implementing the new curriculum; to me that new curriculum is the way to go because the idea is to skill our children. If you look back this system was there even during the colonial regime but maybe it did not work because of the timing of its implementation hence the people rejected it.
The idea, back then, was mainly to separate, what they called F1 and F2. Yes people saw that as is creating some form of bottleneck because people questioned why whites were not separated but you will have the system saying the intelligent go to F1 and the not so intelligent go to F2.
However, when you look at this system deeply it was very progressive as it created a skilled individual in the sense that F1 was mainly theoretical classes while F2 was the practical class, which skilled the learners with various skills outside your normal theoretical subjects.
This saw a number of people, after completing school going straight to Rhodesia Railways or even taking up apprentice opportunities. Those children in F2 were very much easier to train because they would have the skills.
This new curriculum which is coming on board now is such that we want to see a child who is both academic and technical, such that when the pupil leaves school they have skill that they are trained in already.
When you look at this new curriculum you realise that you also have to skill the teachers, as a province we did a general interpretation of the new curriculum for teachers.
As soon as we got the syllabuses we said the teachers that are implementing should come district by district and assist each other in understanding and interpreting the syllabuses. Further we were fortunate that for physical education, sports and mass display we had a big workshop at Milton Junior where we were training all our PE teachers especially on mass display.
This was the first training of its kind in the country and it will now move to other provinces starting with the other two Matabeleland provinces.
This is a time that I am leaving the ministry and I am honestly sad about it because my wish is that I could have stayed to help implement this new curriculum.
VD: Another talking point has been the region’s performance in national examinations, during your tenure at the helm of the province what did you do to ensure an improved performance?
DM: To try and improve the results in Matabeleland (as you know I began in Matabeleland North before moving to Bulawayo), we created linkages with our local universities, firstly the National University of Science and Technology and later the Lupane State University.
With Nust in particular I want to express my gratitude to the late Nust Vice-Chancellor Professor Lindela Ndlovu who came on board quite easily on the initiative, which initially saw selected students in the region go to Nust for special teaching in mathematics, sciences and other commercial subjects.
At LSU, where I am a founder member, we also engaged them and they came up with something which we are calling the Lupane State University Enhancement Programme. It is almost a similar programme with Nust one but this one is being conducted at Gifford High School.
With the Nust programme, we have now decentralised it to say that each of the districts in the province must have a school, where these lessons are conducted every weekend. The reason we decentralised is that we noticed that if we say that they all go to Nust we will end up taking up fewer numbers while with a decentralised system more students can benefit.
Even the methodology we are using, which we adopted from Nust, we simplified it to demystify Maths and Science so that we ensure that most of our students perform well and improve the region’s pass rate. You will realise that from the time we started these programmes our results have since picked up significantly. Even the introduction of awards ceremonies at district and provincial level has also gone a long way in improving the region’s overall performance.
VD: What do you think can be done to further improve the province’s performance?
DM: In terms of children I believe all the children in the country are equally intelligent but the problem when it comes to pass rate is because parental support is critical. What I mean is that if a parent takes their child to whatever province in the country they should support their child not only in terms of encouragement or making sure they have done their homework but making sure that they pay the fees, they buy the uniforms, we know the country’s economic challenges but an effort is more than enough.
With just that parental support system, children could go a long way in terms of performing at their respective schools. In Matabeleland we seem to be a bit not supportive of our children in terms of payment of fees, unlike what we see in other provinces.
The second issue now lies with the children themselves, after being motivated through the payment of fees provision of key learning equipment the children should now have the determination and the zeal to learn and ambition to achieve.
By this I mean the children should push themselves to the limit, yes it is not easy but nothing is when you want to achieve something.
Another problem is that our children in the Matabeleland region give up easily; they easily get waylaid by so-called promises of greener pastures, at the expense of education, unlike in other regions where the children push till the end.
Right now our kids were known for the so-called Vuzu parties, but why our region only, why don’t you experience this in other provinces. We no longer have that fighting spirit which our forefathers Lobengula had, it is really disappointing.
VD: Since 2016 was your last year serving in the ministry, are you happy with the performance of the province in, especially Ordinary Level?
DM: Well, I don’t know because we haven’t fully analysed the Ordinary Level results as a province but definitely one thing I know is that we have been on an upward trend since 2014 in terms of performance.
In 2014 we had the best results nationally because we had a pass rate of 29 percent, in 2015 we moved to number four nationally with a pass rate of 29,1 percent in 2016 we are still analysing the results but so far what we are getting is that it is impossible that we dropped to 25 percent, actually my officers are saying we are in the region of 30 percent.
VD: Thank you Mr Moyo and enjoy your retirement.
DM: Thank you.
