Parly grills new Education minister

NEWLY-APPOINTED Primary and Secondary Education minister Evelyn Ndlovu yesterday received a baptism of fire in Parliament when MPs grilled her over the Continuous Assessment Learning Activity (Cala) policy.

MPs demanded to know the validity of the programme and why it was introduced when students were about to sit for their end of year examinations.

Under Cala, students are supposed to carry out projects and tasks in schools which will constitute 30% of their coursework for the final examination for each subject.

Ndlovu said the ministry was doing everything to ensure students and teachers understood the policy before examinations.

"We have been training teachers to understand the process. We trained a number of teachers, but we are working on a programme with the Public Service Commission to decentralise the training of teachers so that we capacitate schools in rural areas," Ndlovu said.

"We came up with a compressed syllabus and facilitated its distribution to provinces and districts, so that at least teachers work within specific syllabi that is reasonable to cover the gaps brought about by the COVID-19 outbreak," Ndlovu said.

"We will continue to examine that programme to see if there are any problems so that they can be solved."

Ndlovu said the ministry was working with the Information Communication Technology ministry to ensure schools are connected and children have computers.