Africa-Press – Zimbabwe. Primary and Secondary Education Minister, Torerayi Moyo, said that there is nothing wrong with learners doing the Continuous Assessment of Learning Activities (CALA).
He, however, said the manner in which is it being conducted by teachers has to be improved by capacitating them on how to manage projects conducted by learners.
Moyo made the comments while speaking to journalists after taking his oath of office at the State House on Tuesday. NewZimbabwe.com quoted Moyo as saying:
There is nothing wrong with CALA but the manner in which it is handled is a problem.
Our teachers must go for in-service training so that they manage projects that students are doing.
Also, we need to consider whether the students have resources at their disposal because CALA involves a lot of research and do they have laptops, iPads, or smartphones so that they are able to conduct CALA.
I think the general sentiment among parents is that they want CALAs to be reduced.
So we are going to look at the recommendations that were made by stakeholders then we come up with a position.
CALA is a departure from the traditional knowledge-based final examination model whereby learners only focus on passing Grade Seven, O-Level and A-Level examinations to a model that takes into account candidates’ practical and behavioural skills which are assessed continuously.
Arguably, the majority of parents and guardians have been pushing the government to scrap CALA saying it is burdensome and expensive.
In June this year, when he was the chairperson of Parliament’s Portfolio Committee on Education, Moyo said the number of subjects pupils are learning under CALA should be reduced. He said:
From the submission from the ministry, skills which were supposed to be inculcated through CALA are almost the same skills to be done in other learning areas called subject areas.
You talk of innovation, industrialisation and knowledge it is almost the same skills. I do not think it is necessary to labour learners with numerous learning areas, more than the subject areas themselves, it is not proper because it is not scientific.
We know there is specialisation, division of labour. There is no point in having a student doing many Calas per learning area or in every subject.
Somebody is just supposed to take probably one Cala be it in sciences, commercials or arts.
For More News And Analysis About Zimbabwe Follow Africa-Press
