Chinhoyi – Education 5.0 was introduced to ensure the education system spurs the
country towards achieving Vision 2030, riding upon technological advancements and
industrialisation.

The main thrust of technical and vocational education is to attain skills development, at
the same time empowering students with practical skills as well as addressing issues of
youth unemployment and poverty.

Chinhoyi Technical High School has seen itself embracing the Education 5.0 policy as
learners are exposed to a variety of skills that empower them.

Last week, Mashonaland West Minister of State, Marian Chombo, visited the school,
during which she toured different projects being implemented by the students,
empowering themselves at the same time generating revenue for the school.

The students are involved in many projects which when they complete they will be
capacitated and therefore able to start their own entrepreneurial projects. The students
at the school have poultry projects in broilers, road runners, layers where they get 18
crates daily that they sell to the community.

They also have horticulture projects, where their garden produces tomatoes. The school
owns a bakery where they produce bread and also cakes.

Uniforms for the school are being produced at the school and the students buy their
uniforms at the school. There are also livestock projects at the school like cattle, goats
and pigs.

The school authorities believe that if they have more land, they would be able to
accomplish more as they can expand the scope of their projects as opposed to the
current set up where animals are mixing every day because of space constraints.
One of the agriculture students at the school, Funny Nyasha Tumba, who showed the
minister all projects around the school, said he has since gained some skills and has
developed a passion for agriculture.

“So far, I have certain skills that I acquired from the Education 5.0. For instance, I am
able to treat livestock that are affected by foot and mouth diseases. Some learners are
acquiring skills in technical graphics, metal technology and design and are certified with
HEXCO,” said Tumba.

School Development Committee chairman, Blessed Mhlanga, said that the school was
capacitating students so that when they leave school they will have some of the skills
needed to survive.

“When our students leave this school, they will have life skills and they will be able to
seamlessly join industry even though they might not have some expertise. Just recently,
through the Ministry of Education and our head, we introduced HEXCO subjects, which
means that our students are not only for academics but are also technical people, who
add value to this institution.

“We also bought a car for the driving school, for our students so that they learn driving
and they don’t have idle time to start doing drugs. We want to keep them busy. They will
pay a fees for it,” said Mhlanga.

Provincial Education Director in Mashonaland West represented by Trust Dhakwa,
praised the school for being one of the best 10 schools in the country as well as for
embracing technical subjects.

“Among the ten technical high schools in the country, Chinhoyi is representing
Mashonaland West and we are happy that the school is living up to expectations of
being a technical school.

“The plea to you, Minister, is to avail land for the school so that it will be able to expand
on the projects. Most of our urban schools face this challenge of inadequate land.

Commercial ventures are very important to schools. If these commercial ventures are
properly done, we will witness a situation where parents will be called by the school
authorities that we are reducing fees because the school will be using a lot of proceeds
from these ventures.

“Another advantage is education may become affordable to the community so it is an
indispensable commodity,” said the provincial education director.