The Sunday News
Vusumuzi Dube, Online News Editor
THE Ministry of Primary and Secondary Education has said despite the challenges posed by the Covid-19 pandemic this year, the education sector recorded a number of milestones which deserved being celebrated.
The world has for the second year running been immersed with the Covid-19 pandemic that has seen effects of different levels of lockdowns so as to curb its spread.
The education sector has, however, probable been the most affected. Last year, in Zimbabwe schools went for months being closed as the Government moved in to contain the spread of the pandemic.
This year the country, for the first time had just two terms, with schools closing for the final term last Friday, while November examinations are still being written with the final paper set to be written on 31 January next year.
Commenting on the overall performance of the sector this year, Director of Communication and Advocacy in the Ministry, Mr Taungana Ndoro said 2021, despite its many challenges had been a success, as not only did they manage to have learners in class but also they successfully managed to have the final examinations written.
He said the Ministry had since perfected the blended learning approach where their digital drive within schools had been upped.
“The Covid-19 pandemic could be seen as a blessing in disguise for the education sector especially looking at the digital drive within our schools. Previously, the pace had been slow in terms of the digital uptake within the schools, but the Covid-19 pandemic saw us having to take the route of e-learning and both the Ministry and the schools had to change their attitude towards implementing this digital drive.
“Further, when you look at the year, performance-wise I can say there are a lot of milestones despite the obvious challenges posed by the pandemic, for starters we manage to have learners in class and not like the previous year where we had a long period with schools closed, this year we really showed that at least we now can survive and successfully implement programmes under this new normal,” said Mr Ndoro.
He further noted that the final examinations were a testimony on the successes that the Ministry had achieved in the year.
“It is unfortunate that this Covid-19 pandemic continued to change its form, like now we are talking of the omnicron variant. This saw us having a rise in new cases during the last couple of weeks before we closed schools but we remained on high alert and continued to perfect our Standard Operation Procedures.
“Come next year we have already started preparing for schools opening, we have adjusted to the Covid-19 reality and will leave no stone unturned in ensuring that the school going population can access education,” said Mr Ndoro.
The Ministry spokesperson, however, noted that it was unfortunate that they had to deal with high levels of school dropouts which he said was going to be the issue which the Ministry would be looking at addressing this coming year.
“When the Covid-19 pandemic came we initially thought that we will be dealing with health issues but we soon discovered that it was presenting whole new challenges like these school dropout figures. We had our male students getting into artisanal mining, early pregnancies, others lost bread winners to the pandemic, while others just felt a general disinterest towards learning.
“There was so much trauma surrounding this pandemic hence these dropouts, our immediate challenge now is looking at these issues and duly addressing them by holding our community outreach programmes to encourage those learners who dropped out to come back to school,” said Mr Ndoro.
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