The Sunday News
Munyaradzi Musiiwa/Sukoluhle Sinini Ndlovu, Midlands Correspondents
THE Zimbabwe Council for Higher Education will suspend all degrees that will not meet minimum standards prescribed by the Zimbabwe National Qualifications Framework in January next year.
The council has started the quality assurance standards exercise for degree programmes being offered by universities in the country which will see courses that do not meet minimum standards scrapped. In an interview on the sidelines of a public lecture at Midlands State University on Friday, Minister of Higher and Tertiary Education, Science and Technology Development Professor Amon Murwira said Government had set minimum standards and requirements for degree programmes in the country to ensure that they are relevant to the economy and the country at large. Prof Murwira said Zimche will suspend all degree programmes that will not meet the minimum standards by January next year.
“These are the expectations of any degree whether arts and humanities, sciences and engineering. All degrees must promise us what they are going to do. So if a degree does not have these requirements, Zimche is going to look at it using its quality assurance standards. They are already in the process of this quality assurance standards. They are now very advanced at that and we have given them a budget just to do that. We expect between August and February next year that all degrees should have complied with the national qualifications framework. If a degree is not compliant with the framework it shall be suspended,” he said.
Prof Murwira said the exercise will also ensure that there is uniformity in degree programmes being offered in the country in terms of skill and knowledge.
“We now have the Zimbabwe National Qualifications Framework in which we are saying similar degrees should be standardised with at least 80 percent of their courses overlapping and the remaining 20 percent should cater for the specialisation of that university.
So the framework ensures that our educational system is transparent within itself so that it can be trusted from outside.
“What we are also saying is that every course, every degree should have two things that are minimum bodies of knowledge and minimum body of skill which means that we would want to know what exactly the student is going to learn in terms of knowledge and skill,” he said.
Meanwhile, Prof Murwira said the Government has disbursed $5 million for the training of secondary science teachers as the country moves to alleviate shortage of science teachers. In an interview after the stakeholder consultation meeting on manpower planning and development bill held at Gweru polytechnic last week , Prof Murwira said since the inception of the project, Government has availed $5 million to three colleges — Mkoba, Joshua Mqabuko and Masvingo Teacher’s for the programme.
Prof Murwira said this year Government will also avail $2 million, for further development of secondary science teacher training in schools.
“The introduction of secondary Science teacher training is a move which we believe is very important for our future science generation. Teachers are very important, and we can never downplay the importance of teachers. All of us, every one of us came through the hands of a teacher. He said it is crucial that education is packaged as the country moves towards attainment of vision 2030.
