ICT in Education Speech
By Senator David Coltart
3 February 2011
Please note that this is an unedited transcript of the speech.
Ladies and Gentlemen good morning to you all. I apologise for arriving a bit late for your meeting. I have come from what many Harare people think of as a small little village out of town called Bulawayo and our traffic isn’t quite as much as yours in Harare so I was using Bulawayo time to get here and got caught up, my apologies.
Ladies and gentleman this workshop is a very important workshop because information technology in computers is very close to my heart and also is an absolutely key issue which we have to confront if we are to transform our educations sector and provide the foundation our nations needs through it too bring Zimbabwe into the status it deserves to be of being the jewel of Africa.
I left school quite a long time ago now, I left school in 1975, and when I left school in 1975, although I went to what I consider to be a very good school, a catholic brothers school in Bulawayo, there wasn’t a single computer in my school. Even when I went to university computers were a novelty. Infact the first computer that I ever had or interacted with was a little Amstrad. Some of you have probably never heard of that because I see that many of you are much younger but I do see some grey heads like me. But going right the way back to 1986 which was when I got my first computer – this  little Amstrad, – and I remember it proudly noting it could save a whole 2 pages of data! I could type a personal letter, I remember writing a Christmas letter to friends, and my whole letter could be saved and edited. And I thought that this was absolutely marvellous. Just last week I took delivery of a computer for my own office which can literally store every single book that has ever been published. That is the reality and that is where computers have gone just, not even in my lifetime just in my professional lifetime. You can imagine then my deep concern when I discovered when I took over this job that the last time our education curriculum was comprehensively reviewed was the same time I bought that Amstrad, in other words in the mid 1980s. If we think of what has happened to computer technology since the 1980s this explosion of personal computers, the enormous power that computers provide modern society, you will see how far behind our education curriculum has lagged. It is a fact that our education system remains one of the finest in Africa. That is in general terms and it is seen in our high literacy rates and the fact that universities not just in Zimbabwe but elsewhere in the world seek the students coming through our schools because they are of a consistently high standard. But despite that the reality is that the teachers of information technology and our integration of information technology and computers into our broader curriculum and in the teaching of all subjects remain relatively speaking in the dark ages. Because we have not looked at our curriculum for over 20 years to see how information technology should be taught and how it integrates or how it should integrate into the teaching of all subjects, maths, science, chemistry, you name it. And likewise whilst information technology is taught in many schools, the harsh reality is that in most of our primary schools there is not a single computer. In most of our primary schools information technology is not taught and when you see what is happening in South Korea and Singapore and Finland the countries that have the finest education systems you will see that at the earliest possible age children are being introduced to computers in those countries, so by the time a child gets to the age of 6 or 7 they know a keyboard and that provides the foundation necessary for the teaching of not just information technology but of all subjects. And sadly the reality in our nation is that in present a tiny fraction of children have even an opportunity to touch and use a computer, never mind understand how it works prior to leaving school. And for so long as that remains the case our nation will be doomed to 2nd or 3rd class nation status. If we have a vision for our country as being a leader in Africa and a leader in the world, then it is critically important that we get this aspect of our education system right. If follows of course that just as there aren’t very few computers in our classrooms if follows that very few of our subjects are taught using computer technology. It has not been complied with the teaching of maths and technology. And I will speak just now about a conference I went to just 2 weeks ago when for the first time I was shown Apples application technology. It’s a whole new world out there located on the cloud that is there for free, that can draw out these amazing teaching techniques that are available for teachers and it can be drawn down from the cloud and applied, and it is magical. I was always hopeless a maths and chemistry my strength was always in the arts, but in just a few minutes as I was shown I learnt things that I haven’t learnt in 10 years at school about maths and science because the subject was just brought alive through the use of these applications. That ladies and gentleman is the future, and if we don’t grasp that future our nation is going to be left behind.
So what are our plans within the ministry? Well I’m going to outline 4 broad plans that I am promoting within the ministry. The first deals not so much with the teaching of I.T but of laying the foundation necessary for I.T. when I took over this job almost 2 years ago, on the first day when I walked into my office I found that there wasn’t even a computer in my office, in the Minister’s office. There was no internet in the minister of education’s office. I’ve since rectified that, but there are major structural problems within the ministry. As you know the ministries head office is at Ambassador House it’s an 18 storey building, 4 of those floors are devoted to administration. If you go to those administration floors you will find a very dedicated bunch of administrator ploughing through literally mountains of paper. We have 4 floors of paper in that building, with hardly any functional computers with no computerised system, no data capture computerised system, and we are back in the dark ages. We have random computers individuals have their own personal computers, but there is no network and no EMIS (education management information system) in the ministry. And as a result in the ministry we have very inaccurate data. We don’t know in any precision how many teachers we’ve got, how many children are in our schools, how many children have dropped out, what their ages are. Yes we do have data in paper, but we do not have the means to analyse the data that we need to plan. As a result the very first thing that I am setting out to do is to rectify that. We are in discussions with UNICEF and UNESCA, and through the education transition fund I am pleased to tell you that we have recently agreed that we will be bringing in consultants to assess our needs, and we have a plan of action to network the head office, to transform that administration block to implement an EMIS system and then to have a progressive program to network first of all prevention education directors in the 10 provinces, and then district offices and then ultimately schools. But until we actually do that until we lay that foundation, it is going to be very difficult to roll out an education programme in I.T because our planning in itself is efficient because we have inaccurate data. So I hope that in the course of this year we will get at least the head office computerised. You will appreciate that it is not just about networking, if we don’t have administrators that understand computers, who are responsible for the planning of our curriculum, the planning of our education system, it’s going to be very difficult to roll out an educations system that truly embraces information technology, that understand what is needed to insure that teachers are adequately trained in the use of computers. And so this is why this first point if absolutely pivotal.
The second strategy is to embark on comprehensive curriculum review. For the first 18 months I spent a considerable amount of time seeking to understand the problems in the educsation sector, and seeking to build a consensus. By the end of July last year we built a consensus with all sectors of society, with all the sectors in the education system with the World Bank, with UNICEF and of course with government. And on the 7th of September last year I presented to cabinet a 5 point strategic plan to stabilise the education sector and to take it forward. A third of those strategic interventions is to embark on comprehensive curriculum review. And of course pivotal to curriculum review is the role that information technology will play within that. Some of you may know that in Mount Pleasant there is an education training centre in the curriculum development unit. 20 years ago that was a state of the art facility. It had computers in it, that where advanced for that time, it has 2 broadcasting studios, it has a television broadcasting studio, and 20 years ago it was used to develop education materials that were then used country wide. It had an entire artistic section and of course radio was used very effectively especially for rural schools to compliment the activities of teachers in rural schools using radio. Sadly in the last 10 years that entire system has become defunct, and when you visit it now it’s a bit like visiting a museum because you reel to reel tapes, there is hardly a single computer working in that entire building, and a key intervention which I have now managed to raise money for, is to completely rehabilitate that education training centre and the curriculum development unit in Mount Pleasant. We have to get in 39 key members of staff, who are going to start working on curriculum review, not just regarding I.T, but regarding every subject and they know that part of that process is going to be the integration of information technology into the teacher of every single subject. In the course of the last few months I have also been in discussions with Apple computers to use their technology to completely rehabilitate that sector. Now some of you who may be windows orientated may say well why are you going for Apple? And the reason we are going for Apple is because only Apple at this juncture has the technology that we need to take this programme under action from the curriculum development unit into every school, especially rural schools in our country, simply through the use of podcast technology and the use of iPods and hopefully in the future iPad. It is only Apple that has that technology at present.
What is our plan of action in this regard? Well our plan of action first of all is to rehabilitate the ETC and the curriculum development unit, to get it networked, to get those teachers in connected to the internet so that they are in the development of our curriculum, our new curriculum, have access to the cloud and to all these resources that are out there so that as they develop our new curriculum they can use the most advanced materials in the world to ensure that when we teach maths when we teach science when we teach chemistry, our curriculum will infact be right up there with the most advanced in the world. What we also intend doing is rehabilitating the broadcasting unit and the television studio. We intend taking technology and starting off with pilot schools. My intention is to try to progressively get computers especially into rural schools. Let me dream a bit with you for a moment. The ETC centre the CDU centre in Mount Pleasant will be the centre where we develop our own computer based applications using visual aids, using this technology that the rest of the world is developing. So let’s take, for example, the teaching of Maths. To teach maths in a fun way, using visual aids, to put that into computer programmes that are Zimbabwean developed by our own teachers. Then to develop systematically a programme whereby schools in rural areas will have at the very least an iPod with the projector with solar power. So that in even your most remote school, every school will have at least once a week or ideally once a day, an opportunity to come into that computer class room and even if every child won’t have access to a computer, at the very least they will be able to see and learn about these subjects using iPods being projected onto the screen using solar technology. Now all of you know your average rural primary school, you know that in many schools there is an absolutely birth of resources and you go into these schools that have bare class rooms. Those are the schools I have in mind, that why I say we have to dream. And then my hope is that we can progressively, as funding becomes available, expand, not just the number of schools that have access to that technology, but also the number of computers that we put into schools, with a 5 year goal, and a 10 year goal and a 15 year goal. And I believe that if we get the economy functioning in this country it is not unrealistic to have a 10 year goal where every single class, in every single school in our nation has a computer and a projector and solar power so that children even in the most remote school where there is no cell phone contact and no access to the internet will at least every term get a package with the latest computer based teaching aids for use in that school. So what is our long term vision. But we have to make a start and the start will be made In Mount Pleasant by bringing in these teachers and the top teachers with the best attitude towards computer technology, and then to develop the broadcasting unit and the video unit that will produce these materials which will then be used in our schools countrywide. Of course in the short term we will also use Podcast technology in conjunction with the ZBC to resuscitate the use of radio and television but of course we know that has its limitations in schools because especially in rural schools whilst they can get radio, they do not have access to television. And as we all know some of the most important teaching aids are visual and that is what we have to aim for.
The third key intervention area relates to the I.T curriculum itself and developing a programme of action for the teaching of I.T in our schools. My concern is that there has not been a well thought through programme of action in this regard, sometimes the supply of hardware and software has been random. We have had incidences where computers have been delivered to schools and there is no electricity in those schools. Or teachers themselves don’t understand how to use the computers. So whilst it makes a good front page headline, ‘The Computers have been delivered to schools’, in practical terms is doesn’t have a profound impact in the teaching of I.T in those schools. And so a key part of the general process of curriculum review has to be a close study on how we actually teach I.T in our schools and a progressive plan of action to roll out computers into schools and to ensure the teachers themselves are used to that. And for those who are windows based, and P.C based, that is where the sales of those computers of course will come in because in terms of the pricing between MAC and PC. MACs are obviously exceptionally expensive compared to PCs, and I see MAC technology being used in this relatively narrow area of using applications, whereas PCs will be used more in the teaching of I.T because they are that must cheaper and can be rolled out easier to more schools.
The 4th key area relates to the training of teachers themselves,. Now as you know the training of new teachers is done by a completely separate ministry to mine, by the Ministry of Higher Education and whilst there is a close interaction, of course I don’t have the same influence over the training of new teachers as I do in the re-training of existing teachers. So our strategy is 2 fold in that regard. We have to have a close interaction with the ministry of Higher Education, to ensure that as we roll out these other programmes; new teachers are going to be taught effectively in the use of computers and in teaching the new curriculum that we intend rolling out. But the second aspect to this is in the re-training of the 110,000 teachers we already have in our system. That is absolutely critical, that is where the education training centre in Mount Pleasant comes into play again. There is an entire facility that was set up there 25 years ago that is not being used by the ministry. There are hostels there, there is a huge building now being used by the women’s University. We need to resuscitate that and we need to take that back into the Ministry of Education and our intention is to establish a regional training centre at Mount Pleasant, so that systematically we ensure that as many of our existing teachers are brought in to that centre and trained in the use of computer technology. In a general sense of course using PCs, but also in that very specific sense of using the Podcast technology that we intend rolling out into all our schools countrywide.
Ladies and Gentleman I need to end. We can look at what I have said today in 2 ways. We can look at it as a daunting challenge which it is. The resources that we need to roll this out are indeed daunting and it is going to be a major battle for us to secure sufficient funding to achieve these goals. But we can also look at it very positively, as an opportunity to leapfrog other nations. One of the bizarre silver linings, in the clouds that have affected our country certainly in the last 10 years is that whilst we have lagged behind, relating to other countries, especially in the realm of information technology we now have an opportunity to leapfrog, to bring in the most modern, the most advanced technologies and in that way bring ourselves up to the level of Singapore, and South Korea and the other leading educational nations in the world. Our vision in the short term is to ensure that as many schools in the very least have Podcast technology, and projectors to that children can at the very least get just an inkling of that computers are all about. Also have the benefit of these teaching aids applications that are out there, and in that way enhance their studies. But in the long term we need to have a vision as a nation to progressively roll out information technology so in that 10/15 years every child that goes through our schools will understand how computers work, how to use them, because that is where the world is going. When you see what is available in schools in Singapore and South Korea and Finland you will be amazed. In those schools governments have poured money into information technology and literally in Singapore, every single child has access to a computer. That needs to be our vision. If we don’t collectively have that vision it doesn’t matter how many diamonds we have, how many platinum mines we may have, how beautiful our tourist facilities are, we will remain a second class citizen, because as we all know information technology and computers is the future and we need to provide our children with the means to embrace that future. That is why Chairman, conferences like this are so important because through conferences like this we can encourage each other capture some of this vision, and develop the momentum that we need in society to ensure that government, not just this government, but governments in future make this an absolute priority. Thank You.