ZANU PF has recommended the adoption and implementation of the findings of the 1999 Nziramasanga Commission of inquiry into the education system which will see children as young as four years old going to school.
BY ELIAS MAMBO
In its Central Committee report tabled before the Zanu PF’s 14th National People’s Conference in Chinhoyi, the party said that the government should embrace the findings of the commission in order to cater for different learning capabilities.
“The Nziramasanga recommendation will be energetically embraced to provide a renewed focus for early learning, for young Zimbabweans,” reads the report.
The adoption of the Nziramasanga Commission also augurs well with Mugabe’s appointment of former Masvingo governor and senator, Josaya Hungwe to be the Minister of Psychomotor.
If the commission’s recommendations are implemented, this would see the Early Childhood Education (ECD) being composed of a four-year cycle.
ECD module A will be for four-year-olds, module B will be for the five-year-olds, Grade One for the six-year-olds and Grade Two for the seven-year-olds.
However, analysts say this will create problems since schools currently do not have the capacity to accommodate more pupils, due to the limited number of classrooms and resources, which have resulted in some schools conducting lessons under trees and open spaces. Apart from that, most teachers are also still not trained to handle infants that are as young as four.
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In 1999, President Robert Mugabe commissioned the inquiry led by Caiphas Nziramasanga in a bid to resuscitate the education system which was showing signs of collapsing.
However, the commission’s recommendations were never implemented resulting in the country’s education sector further collapsing. The implementation of the commission was also overshadowed by the government’s decision to localise the examination body from Cambridge to Zimbabwe Schools Examination Council [Zimsec].
The Nziramasanga report recommended that the nation should take a paradigm shift from traditional education curricula to a diversified curriculum that provided for learners with different learning capabilities.
In the central committee report, Zanu PF recommended that the commission be considered as a way of catering for different learning capabilities of the children.
