ZIMBABWE celebrates her Independence Day on April 18, marking 37 years after the end of a bitter, protracted armed struggle.
Since the country’s attainment of independence in 1980, there have been significant efforts to consolidate gains made thus far.
The transformation of the education sector and economic reforms are some notable developments the country has seen over the years.
The education system inherited by Zimbabwe from the colonial era was designed for the formal sector and public administration and not for the overall development of indigenous entrepreneurship.
“The colonial educational system has been criticised for being too literary and too classical to be useful,” reads part of a report titled ‘Zimbabwe-Constitutional Legal Foundations’.
The essence of black education was to ensure that they did not compete with whites for high- profile jobs but for then to remain servile to whites.
The colonial regime established a structure of discrimination of blacks in the sector in order to sideline them from acquiring the basic right to education.
The colonial regime, through their colonial policy, sidelined the black majority with only 12 percent of the 100 000 blacks who completed seven years of primary education proceeding to secondary education every year.
In addition, the colonial regime came up with a restrictive law, the Native Education Department and the Education Act of 1979 which made sure blacks received inferior education in the form a watered-down curriculum.
However, tremendous strides have been made by Government towards the domestication of education since 1980, when the country inherited a racially skewed education system which favoured mostly whites.
One of the major features of the colonial education system was the F1 Programme and the F2 pathways which separated blacks from whites.
A product of the 1966 Education Plan, the dominantly white only programme prepared whites for the administration of industry, education and law while the F2 concept, viewed as a watered-down curriculum, sought to create a pool of semi-skilled and half-educated poorly paid labourers to serve in white owned industries.
The colonial education regulatory frameworks and statutory provisions created very glaring inequalities which affected black students’ advancement opportunities.
The abolishment of the pre-independence education system saw the phasing out of the F1 and F2 programmes to allow an inclusive education and all academic system which set five ‘O’-Levels as the basic entry requirement in both tertiary institutions and the job market.
Zimbabwe also witnessed incredible strides in education through school expansion, teacher training and resource improvement.
‘Growth with equity’ was the core driving principle adopted by the Zimbabwean Government to enable the Government to redress the inherited inequities and imbalances in access to basic needs such as education.
Primary schooling was made tuition-free and resulted in gross enrolment rates that exceeded 100 percent.
By the end of the first decade of independence, Zimbabwe had achieved universal primary education.
Student enrolment ballooned in both primary and secondary schools following the opening of schools that had been closed due to the war, especially in rural areas.
The general expansion in enrolments proportionally called for increased infrastructural demands exacerbated by massive vandalism of educational infrastructure that had occurred in the years leading to 1980.
However the introduction of the Economic Structural Adjustment Programme (ESAP) marked the beginning of a phase of reduced Government funding of social services sectors, education included.
This saw the re-introduction of school fees and various levies in both primary and secondary schools.
According to the 1991 Ministry of Education, Art, Sports and Culture ED46 Returns, there were 4 461 viable and non-viable primary schools with Manicaland Province having over 700 schools.
There were 1 499 viable and non-viable secondary schools across the country with the Midlands Province having nearly 300 schools while Harare had the least at 74 schools.
To date, there are over 5 000 primary schools and over 2 300 secondary schools across the country.
According to the key findings of the 2014 Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey, the country’s educator has made great strides in terms of access and school completion rate among children.
“Since 2009, school readiness, the percentage of children in the first grade (Grade 1) of primary school who had attended pre-school during the previous school year increased from about 75 percent to about 86 percent in 2014 while secondary school attendance ratio increased about 13 percentage points between 2009 and 2010,” revealed UNICEF.
In 2006, Government introduced the Early Childhood Development programme in primary schools as a response to the 1998 Nziramasanga Commission recommendations on education and training.
The Zimbabwe Integrated Teacher Education Course (ZINTEC) put in place to react to qualified teacher-shortages soon after independence has been lauded as one of the historic education reforms aimed at coping with the ever expanding education demands and the need for qualified teachers in the country.
Significant strides have been made in the capitalisation of both the supervision and the examination of education in-spite of financial constraints that continue to frustrate the total evolution of our noble education system which is a marvel across Africa.
In 2013, President Mugabe called for the need to transform the structure and curriculum of the country’s education system in order to adequately meet the evolving development aspirations with greater focus placed on the teaching and learning of science, technology, engineering and mathematics, including entrepreneurship.
It is against this background the Ministry of Primary and Secondary Education, in November 2014, embarked on a consultative curriculum review process nationwide where 961 000 people participated and paved way for the New Curriculum Framework which provides a comprehensive plan for a rapid and sustainable transformation of the education system from 2015 to 2022.
Zimbabwe’s heritage, history, national ideals and aspirations have been encompassed in the new curriculum.
These values have seen the launching of the National School Pledge which is being recited in schools around the country.
Under the new curriculum, the Ministry of Primary and Secondary Education introduced compulsory agriculture studies at Grade Seven level.
The pupils will be on a continuous assessment from Grade Four and the cumulative marks will be part of the final examination mark at Grade Seven.
The first group of agriculture pupils at Grade Seven will sit this year.
Learning areas in the infant level school (Early Childhood to Grade Two) are the visual and performing arts, physical education, mass displays, indigenous languages, mathematics and science, family and heritage studies and Information and Communication Technology (ICT).
The crosscutting themes include gender, children’s rights, disaster risk management, financial literacy, sexuality, HIV and AIDS, child protection, heritage studies, human rights, collaboration and environmental issues.
The junior level curriculum includes, languages, mathematics, heritage and life skills orientation programme (LOP), social studies, science and technology, agriculture, visual and performing arts, family, religion and moral education, physical education, sport and mass displays and ICT.
Emphasis at junior level is on the development of STEM disciplines and practical learning areas such as design and technology, ICT, art and theatre arts are included and they further broaden the educational base at primary level so that learners will be able to identify the areas they would want to continue with at a higher level starting at Form Three up to Form Six.