Perm Sec meets council officials over schools handover Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Primary and Secondary Education Dr Sylvia Utete-Masango launches the Gampu Primary School Banana Project in Mpopoma, Bulawayo yesterday
Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Primary and Secondary Education Dr Sylvia Utete-Masango launches the Gampu Primary School Banana Project in Mpopoma, Bulawayo yesterday

Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Primary and Secondary Education Dr Sylvia Utete-Masango launches the Gampu Primary School Banana Project in Mpopoma, Bulawayo yesterday

Thandeka Moyo, Chronicle Reporter
THE Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Primary and Secondary Education, Dr Sylvia Utete-Masango, yesterday met Bulawayo City Council officials to discuss the local authority’s decision to transfer the running of its schools to parents.

Recently, the local authority revealed that it would hand over 29 primary and one secondary school to School Development Committees (SDCs).

BCC plans to give the committees powers to collect fees and levies, make crucial decisions that include employing and paying their respective staff members.

In an interview, Dr Utete-Masango said the meeting was fruitful though she could not disclose further details.

“We did deliberate and negotiate on a number of issues. After that they will take the issue to council. They will then communicate in writing as they were quite agreeable to some of the suggestions that we had,” she said. “I cannot say we agreed on anything yet as it is still premature to comment.”

Dr Utete-Masango also visited some schools in the city.

“After the meeting I decided to do some visits which led me to Gampu Primary School where we are officially launching the planting of 400 banana trees. These will be for feeding the pupils to balance their diet. We hope they will be able to generate some income from the same project,” she said.

Meanwhile, Dr Utete-Masango has warned parents that all children who go to unregistered Early Childhood Development centres will be forced to repeat both ECD A and B before they can proceed to Grade One.

“We would like to urge members of the public to stop sending their children to unregistered ECD centres. When the time comes for Grade One, they will need to start afresh from ECD A since those institutions do not teach our new curriculum,” she said.

“We have noticed that some parents still choose unregistered care centres and we just want to advise them not to waste their time and money as we will add two more years for their children when they go to mainstream schools.”

@thamamoe

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