The Ministry of Primary and Secondary Education is set to embark on a national exercise to review the Continuous Assessment Learning Activities (CALA) programme.
This was revealed by the Deputy Minister of Primary and Secondary Education Edgar Moyo in Parliament on Wednesday while responding to a question asked by the legislator Williams Madzimure on how the Ministry is going to streamline the subjects so that children carry manageable loads when going to school on a daily basis.
CALA which is part of the new curriculum introduced in 2015 is being reviewed after its first seven-year cycle ended last year.
Under the new regime, learners work on projects, whose marks constitute 30 percent of the final exam grades.
The CALA curriculum has been heavily criticised by students, parents and teachers for being a challenge because no training was done prior to its introduction and it is financially demanding.
“This week we are finishing the training for people to conduct the reviews. I think, next week on the 16th, that is when we are going to have the national review session which is going to run nationally in all settings. It is there that we expect to receive recommendations from different stakeholders on how to view the entire curriculum including this formative examination situation which we call Continuous Assessment Learning Areas (CALA),” said Moyo.
He said on the issue of packaging the assignments that are given to students, the school heads and teachers have been trained to package the assignments into manageable units not to choke the children by giving them everything at once.
“If that is happening, it is happening against the policy of the Government. We expect them to package the assignment into manageable units so that our children are given a period of time when that activity is taking place,” said Moyo.
He said the Ministry is expecting to get all observations through the review sessions.
“We expect that observations, like the Hon. Member has made, are brought to the review sessions so that they can be taken on board. If there is need for further training, then that should be planned and conducted,” said Moyo.
