The Sunday News
Munyaradzi Musiiwa, Midlands Correspondent
SCHOOLS have been given the green light to engage the Vehicle Inspection Department to start offering lessons for provisional and learner’s licences as a partial implementation of the new schools curriculum.
The go-ahead comes after the Ministry of Transport and Infrastructural Development has approved a request from the Ministry of Primary and Secondary Education to help in the implementation of the new curriculum. Speaking at the presentation of the 2016 Secretary’s Merit Award to Thornhill High School in Gweru last week, Primary and Secondary Education Permanent Secretary, Dr Silvia Utete-Masango said schools should now start teaching lessons for provisional and driver’s licenses as part of the new curriculum.
Dr Utete-Masango said schools will work with the Vehicle Inspection Department (VID) which has the mandate to issue learners’ and drivers’ licences. She said all schools should ensure that all pupils obtain driver’s licences before they finish their Ordinary Levels, as soon as they reach the age of 16.
“At 16 years you are allowed to have a driver’s licence and we don’t work in isolation of the Vehicle Inspection Department. What stops you from ensuring that no one leaves this school without a driver’s licence? I have already written to the Minister of Transport and Infrastructural Development (Dr Joram Gumbo) and explained to him that with the new curriculum these are some of the competences that are quick wins to us and they have approved. All you need to do now is to engage the Vehicle Inspection Department (VID),” she said.
She said the new curriculum seeks to enhance the education system in the country and increase and broaden learning and teaching skills.
“The ministry’s mandate is to provide access to quality education to all and this is done through two routes; namely the formal route and the non-formal route. Learners, as we all know, invest many years of their lives in school, and this investment must pay handsome returns. However, this was not the case in the past, since, for example, at O-level only 25 percent of the candidates were passing while 75 percent is said to have failed. This curriculum, which we have enriched through the new/updated curriculum, was very narrow, and not broad enough to embrace every learner,” she said.
This comes at a time it was also revealed that 2 700 pupils, about 30 percent of those who sat for public examinations at Ordinary Level in Bulawayo last year did not pass any subject, something that is worrying officials. Thornhill High School was the recipient of the award in the Midlands Province, which is done annually to honour schools that are performing well in all areas of education.
Dr Utete-Masango also said schools should take advantage of Government’s Command Fisheries Programme to start fishery projects as part of the new curriculum.
“Government has embarked on an agricultural programme called Command Agriculture. This programme has moved a step further to Command Livestock which also includes fishery. Under Command Fisheries, Schools that are into fish farming will receive fingerlings and the feed for free. We will however, have to submit our requests to the committee that is spearheading the programme,” she said.
