Govt to upgrade basics to secondary schools

Government will this year upgrade at least 22 basic schools to secondary school level in each province.

Education Deputy Minister, Patrick Ngoma, says the idea of upgrading basic schools to secondary schools is to take education as close to the people as possible.

Mr Ngoma says government is determined to improve education standards in the country as could be evidenced by the launch of the new curriculum this week.

He says each school that will be running pre-school education programmes will have trained teachers to handle that sector.

Mr Ngoma, who is in North-western province touring some education facilities, said this when he paid a courtesy call on Provincial Deputy Permanent Secretary, Alfred Chingi in Solwezi last evening.

The deputy minister also called on all people to support the newly launched education curriculum aimed at improving education standards of the children in the country.

Speaking at the same occasion, North-western Provincial Deputy Permanent Secretary, Alfred Chingi, said the province is ready to support government programmes aimed at uplifting education standards.

He said he did not see the reason some sectors of society were sceptical about the introduction of local languages as medium of instruction in lower grades when it is working well in other countries like Germany, Japan and China, among others.

Mr Chingi said while there might be challenges from the beginning, in due course people will start appreciating the system.