By Vumani Mthiyane
Deputy Minister of Primary and Secondary Education, Edgar Moyo, has challenged Matabeleland South Province to prioritise construction of more Science feeder schools to the National University of Science and Technology (NUST).
Moyo was responding recently to the action plan on devolution reports that were presented to Matabeleland South Provincial Affairs Minister, Abednico Ncube, during an all stakeholders meeting that involved all the 13 Members of National Assembly from the province, senators, government officials, rural district councils and non-governmental-organisations among others.
The entire Matabeleland region has a limited number of science schools, a development that has over the years seen students from other regions flooding NUST at the expense of locals.
“In conceptualisation and prioritisation of the devolution agenda, I strongly feel that the province must prioritise construction of specific secondary schools that will address the gap of poor science subject results,” said Moyo.
“Also improve and equip the existing ones with relevant tools and qualified Science, Mathematics, Biology and Chemistry teachers. We have NUST but no feeder schools from Matabeleland South.”
Moyo said the future of employment was anchored on sciences, adding it was high time the province started working on that.
“Once this is done, our children will be enrolled at NUST,” said Moyo.
“In the same vein don’t forget to develop the infrastructure at satellite schools. An area that is ignored by the NGO sector. However, the shortage of science teachers in the province remains an impediment in the learning of Sciences despite continued efforts in state-of-art laboratories in rural areas.”
Matabeleland South Provincial Affairs Minister, added there was a need to build more laboratories and have science teachers across rural schools.
“Let’s have our children learning Mathematics, Biology, Chemistry and Physics so that they can go to UZ (University of Zimbabwe) and NUST and enrol for Medicine,” said Ncube.
“We don’t have medical doctors because if a child studies Sociology at university he or she might spend more than 10 years out of employment.”
However, following growing concerns that children in the province were denied the opportunity to pursue Science related studies at A level due to lack of laboratories in most rural schools, some NGOs and Gwanda Community Trust constructed some state-of- the-art laboratories.
