… Using group vision approach to develop schools
Tendai Charumbira
The Reformed Church in Zimbabwe (RCZ) has unveiled its five year school development plans as it aims at making its schools the best.
The church which is the responsible authority for some of the best schools in terms of academics and sport which include Pamushana, Alheit Chingombe 2, Gutu Zimuto and Chibi High Schools, said they are using a group vision approach to develop their schools.
RCZ Education secretary Dr Julius Witmos Mutumburanzou said Covid-19 forced them to reduce enrolment in order to meet the required standards, a development that has affected a number of children who rely on their schools.
He said this has necessitated the need to develop infrastructure to cater for the ever growing need as well as modernising the infrastructure.
In an exclusive interview with TellZim News, Dr Mutumburanzou said their main agenda this year onwards is infrastructure development as they have realised that so many people rely on them.
“Our major aim in our five year plan is infrastructure development. Our enrolment has been reduced as we tried to abide by Covid-19 protocols, so we want to develop all our schools using a group approach where each school is expected to pool resources for its development though it will be centrally managed.
“We have realised that we may not have enough land to do all we want, so we are going to construct multi-storey buildings especially for hostels and classrooms. We want to enrol as many pupils as we can but also being able to maintain the ratio of two pupils per room,” said Mutumburanzou.
He went on to say they want to modernise classrooms and make sure that they meet current “We want all our school to have modern classrooms as well as the equipment. We want to do away with a situation where pupils go out of class and walk to ablution facilities, each class should have its own facilities to minimize chances of mischief.
“We want to build storey buildings for hostels as well as classrooms for us to increase our enrolment as it was reduced as a result of Covid-19 restrictions to maintain social distance. We also want to construct state of the art buildings,” he added.
In terms of learning facilities and time, he said they have devised a programme to minimise loss of time as they have roped in experts from Reformed Church University to train and empower teachers with requisite knowledge in online learning.
He said they have since created a website where all learning materials will be uploaded and all pupils in the RCZ schools will have access to as well as conducting interactive online sessions.
“We formed a RCZ consortium where all RCZ educational institutions are subscribers and we have roped in experts from Reformed Church University and phase one of the programme is already underway. Teachers are being trained and busy uploading material on the website. We will keep on doing more teacher development programmes to enhance our results,” said Dr Mutumburanzou.
He also said in their programme they intend to improve their diet to meet hotel standards and their cook matrons and other relevant staff are also being trained on that.
“We are in the process of improving diet in our schools. We want our diet to meet hotel standards so that we do away with the belief that boarding schools serve cabbages and beans. We have since started training cook matrons and other relevant staff members. We want our pupils to miss school food when they go home for vacations and avoid food riots at school,” he said.
Dr Mutumburanzou further said they are helping the institution come with good budgets as well as training heads on the presentation and formulationof the budget to parents so that it becomes easy to get approval from the parent ministry.
“We have since started doing workshops to capacitate our heads and other staff members and capacitate them in coming up with good budgets which are realistic to parents. This makes it easier to get fees review approval from the ministry,” he added.
The education secretary also said their schools operate mainly within the confines of government and ministry regulations and on this regard, RCZ Schools have no challenges which other schools are facing.
RCZ also owns Morgenster Teachers College, high school and mission hospital. It also have special needs schools including Henry Murray School for the deaf and Copota School for the blind, as well as the Reformed Church University (RCU).
