New school for Hwange

24 Apr, 2022 - 00:04 0 Views
New school for Hwange Fr Angel Artime Fernandez

The Sunday News

Leonard Ncube, Victoria Falls Reporter

THE Catholic Church’s Salesians of Don Bosco has opened a new secondary school in Hwange Town in a bid  to reduce shortage of learning institutions in Matabeleland North Province.

The school started last year with 90 Form Ones who are now in Form Two and this year enrolled another batch of 90 Form Ones. The idea is to progressively grow towards Form Four and eventually Advanced Level.

Don Bosco Technical Secondary School (DBTSS) will be one of its kind offering a combination of secondary school education with a rich curriculum comprising languages and cultural studies among others, together with Hexco courses from Form 1 so that when learners get to Form Four they will be having Hexco certificates.

This will give learners lifelong skills training in line with Government transformation agenda.

Currently DBTSS shares infrastructure with the existing Don Bosco Technical College in Hwange and is an annex of Marist Brothers, another Catholic school in Hwange District, situated near Dete.

On Friday, Rector Major of Don Bosco from Italy Fr Angel Artime Fernandez presided over a groundbreaking ceremony where he laid a foundation stone for construction of a state-of-the-art school within the premises.

The school will start with three classroom blocks comprising 14 classrooms, six offices, ablution facilities and a tuck shop. It needs a fully furnished library, state-of-the-art sports field and a school bus among other needs and the whole project requires US$400 000. This will be a day school but there are plans for a boarding facility to cater for vulnerable learners.

Speaking at the groundbreaking ceremony which was attended by scores of people drawn from a cross section of the Hwange community including Ministry of Primary and Secondary Education officials and captains of industry, Fr Fernandez said DBTSS is like a rising morning star.

“I’m very happy to be a witness to the laying of this foundation. The word says ‘what can we expect from the son of a carpenter’ and that extends to say what can we expect from these boys and girls? The answer is, we can expect everything. Education can change the person and Don Bosco was convinced of this. May we continue with actualisation of this dream,” he said.

Don Bosco projects administrator Fr Bruno Zamberlan said this is the first time a Rector Major has come to Zimbabwe and his presence seals that the congregation is taking the challenge to develop the community.

DBTSS principal Fr Simba Muza said the school’s geographical reach is wide with learners drawn from in and around Hwange.

Fr Muza said DBTSS will offer not only education but lifelong skills to young people.

“We have been able to make strides in pursuit of our goals thanks to co-operation of our locals and other partners across the globe. We have established a technical secondary school that will be a feeder institution to the technical college and will technically orient pupils so that upon completion they will already have skills that will prepare them for formal employment in response to the prevailing situation of school leavers who have no skills,” said Fr Muza.

“We are happy that we have taken this direction. We have 180 students at the moment. We started last year with 90 students and this year we had another 90.

School – Image taken fron Shutterstock

We limited the number to 90 because of the infrastructure challenges which we are now trying to address through construction of the secondary school so that we may be able to offer training to more children. Some may then advance in their technical oriented career paths by feeding into the technical college.”

The school will be fully equipped with science labs and workshops, while some infrastructure and workshops will be shared with the technical college.

“Our cry mainly revolves around request for support from the community. We are trying to engage partners from the international community and they will always ask what we have,” he said.

There are about 600 primary and 200 secondary schools in Matabeleland North, a majority of them satellite institutions without proper facilities.

The Government has called for partnerships to build at least 100 schools per year to reduce a backlog of more than 2 000 schools.

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