Govt to launch education TV channel

THE Government is set to launch an education television channel in line with the new education curriculum.

This comes as the country is implementing the digitalisation programme which we see an increase in the number of television stations countrywide.

The Minister of Primary and Secondary Education Dr Lazarus Dokora last Friday said the channel will be a platform to tell the Zimbabwean story.

Dr Dokora said his Ministry was ready to support content producers.

He said presently children were being bombarded with television content with storylines that they cannot relate to.

“Publishers should start coming up with new story books and animation for the television education channel which is coming. An education television channel is coming and we want to see how creative your kids are at school,” said Dr Dokora.

“Our TV channel should be a channel which every child in the country will not want to miss. The channel should be part of us. The channel is coming. The story should be ours, the heritage should be ours and the identity should be ours.”

He said already there are publishers who are ready to take up the challenge to create content that takes into account the country’s heritage.

Dr Dokora said some people were still suffering from an inferiority complex and do not believe that local publishers can tell the local narrative.

He said the dominance of western culture has seen the continued teaching of Shakespeare books in schools.

Already the Ministry has availed $9 million to support the implementation of the new curriculum.

The introduction of the new curriculum is a product of recommendations made by the Nziramasanga Commission.

In 1998, the Government set up the Presidential Commission of Inquiry into Education and Training (CEIT) which was chaired by Dr Caiphas Nziramasanga, a lecturer at the University of Zimbabwe. — @nqotshili