African education curricula irrelevant -PS

Written by on May 10, 2019

THERE is need to restructure the current education curriculum used in most of the African countries if the continent is to transform, says General Education permanent secretary (PS) Jobbicks Kalumba.
Dr Kalumba who emphasized on the need to invest in knowledge said there was the need for tutors to incorporate pedagogical skills in teaching to catalyze exceptional learning moments.
Dr Kalumba said the curriculum should be restructured attempts to meet pressing national needs in a global context.
He said this when he officially opened the Advanced course of the 2019 Knowledge Co-Creation Programme (KCCP) in Lusaka yesterday.
The KCCP has drawn 48 representatives and participants who are mostly teachers from 13 countries across Africa and are expected to develop their teaching skills in 4 weeks.
The PS who thanked the Japanese government for supporting the education sector in Zambia noted that the structure of education curricula in most African countries was not relevant because it did not address the challenges that affected the people.
He said Africa needed to incorporate trans-formative curriculum design and technology-enhanced learning if it was to transform.
“The problem we have in Africa is that our education has dwelled so much on three things namely: concepts, perceptions and formalities. Theories won’t take us anywhere. We must realise that a lesson plan must go beyond a mere presentation of facts on a piece of paper.
“Time has now come for us to migrate from perceptions to realities, from formalities to requirements and from concepts to products by impacting knowledge that will transform the lives of our leaners. We must invest highly in the subjects that are going to transform Africa, technical subjects such as Mathematics and Science,” Dr Kalumba said.
The PS further said most of the current curriculum contents that were taught in schools are more than 6 decades old and do not add value to leaners.
“We in Africans have not taken much of our time to invest in knowledge, many are the times we have invested much of our time in squabbles, hatred and this has not helped us.
“Why is it that we cannot even manufacture a bicycle and yet we have minerals in the continent of Africa? Why it that we can’t even is manufacture a needle, worse still a tooth pick? It is because we have not invested much in our knowledge and the type of education we have impacted in our learners,” he said
He added, “If our lesson plan is just for concepts, perceptions and formalities, then, we have not created knowledge for our leaners.”
He challenged the KCCP participants to ensure that the right educational policies, especially those regarding curriculum development and teaching pedagogy, do not just end in books.
And speaking at the same at the same occasion, Ambassador of Japan to Zambia Hidenobu Sobashima pledged his country’s commitment to continuing its support to Zambia and Africa in human resource development.
As for education in Zambia, Mr Sobashima said, Japan has traditionally attached importance to the improvement of the quality of basic education by continuously assisting the development of capacity of teachers, particularly through lesson study.


Reader's opinions

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *



Current track

Title

Artist