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Dr Utete-Masango

Obert Chifamba Manicaland Bureau
Parents must encourage their children to industriously participate in non-formal learning activities like driving, landscaping, photography and video-filming while still at school as part of the process of boosting their exit competencies when they eventually leave school, an official has said. Secretary for Primary and Secondary Education Dr Sylvia Utete-Masango made the remarks on Tuesday when she addressed people gathered for the handover of low-cost boarding facilities to Rimbi High School in Chipinge South.

The facilities were constructed by non-governmental organisation, PLAN International, at a cost of $40 000 to accommodate 35 girls whose homes are far from the school. The girls pay rental fees of $20 per term and provide themselves with other basic requirements like toiletries, linen and food. Officials from the Public Service Commission, the Ministry of Youth, Indigenisation and Economic Empowerment and that of Primary and Secondary Education, representatives from some Government departments, school heads, teachers, schoolchildren and parents attended the ceremony.

“As we are gathered, we must realise that PLAN International is a developing partner which has played their part so we need to take it up from there and make sure we provide similar structures for all the children, including boys that are affected by the problem of walking long distances to and from school,” Dr Utete-Masango said.

“I want to be here again next October on the same date to officially open the boys’ facilities that you are going to construct as parents, with support from your district and provincial education officials so that the effort by developing partners does not come to naughty. What developing partners are doing is actually in line with the new curriculum’s dictates of trying to inculcate a strong sense of responsibility among the youths and the concept of feeling for the other’s plight as demanded by our culture and tradition.”

Dr Utete-Masango said students should not be left out in the process as they needed to develop skills that were not necessarily related to academics, but those that made them all-rounders who could hold their own after leaving school.

She said the new curriculum was developed to help children identify the core values of Zimbabweans in particular and Africa in general. Rimbi High School was established independence and has since evolved to a fully fledged secondary school that has an Advanced Level facility. It has 1 114 students, with approximately 300 requiring boarding facilities, as they travel long distances daily to and from school. Some are seeking lodgings at a nearby township and in villages around the school, which is not ideal for them to concentrate on school work.