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Minister Lazarus Dokora

Nqobile Tshili, Chronicle Correspondent
THE Minister of Primary and Secondary Education Dr Lazarus Dokora has said about 70 000 teachers have been trained under the teacher capacitation programme to enable them to implementation the new curriculum.

In an interview on Friday, Dr Dokora said the teacher capacitation programme was meant to equip teachers with skills to tackle the new challenges presented by the new curriculum.

He said the programme was being implemented in stages as the Government cannot train and employ all the required specialist teachers.

“If I wait for teacher to graduate from college with a certificate that says Heritage Studies, when will that be? I’ve to work with teachers that are already deployed in the system. The teachers in the field already have the experience and all they need are workshops to equip them with new skills. More than 70 000 teachers have so far been trained at these workshops and now have skills to undertake continuous assessment on Visual and Performing Arts and Information Communication Technologies (ICTs),” he said.

Dr Dokora said the implementation of the new curriculum requires teachers to think outside the box as they were operating in different environments.

He said the Government was committed to curriculum development and will next year inject more funds to ensure enough teaching and learning resources are available.

Earlier this year, the Government released $9 million for curriculum development.

“The process to utilise the $9 million facility has started and this allocation is for this year only. Next year we are going to have another budget that speaks to that. We can’t say how much at this stage. We will see how we consume and look at the pattern and see if we would need more or slightly less,” said Dr Dokora.

He said unlike in the past when schools were just buying text books, the new curriculum is wider  and it requires additional equipment.

Minister Dokora said he will continue advocating for new teachers although he was conscious that the number was limited by availability of finances.

“I need more teachers, that’s an open secret but I have to work within the envelope, which is a finance matter. We did say way back last year in October that we needed 7 000 teachers and I’ve been allowed to get 2 300. I still have a humble request for the 4 700 deficit. It’s a function of finance and once finances are in place the employer can grant permission for us to recruit more,” said Dr Dokora.

@nqotshili