Parents and guardians under the Our Zimbabwe campaign have petitioned Parliament to have the new curriculum suspended, saying it is expensive and its implementation was rushed.
The new curriculum was introduced in 2015 by the then education minister Lazarus Dokora but was resisted by parents and teachers.
Parents have been opposed to the National Pledge, which has since been declared unconstitutional by the Constitutional Court, the Continuous Assessment Learning Activity (CALA), and projects.
Learners are asked to do many projects per term which are deemed too expensive. The petition, signed by over 10 000 parents, reads in part:
There was no adequate consultation with key stakeholders including teachers and parents.
The curriculum was rushed, it is important to consult key stakeholders before any policy is passed and for it to be meaningful and relevant.
The objectives of any curriculum cannot be achieved if it is not well planned and implemented.
While we agree with the fact that there is a need to modernise our education system in order to align it with global trends and modern technologies to enable our children to be fully participating members of the global community, this is not possible in our situation where we have obsolete education facilities and an unmotivated teaching fraternity.
Students, especially in rural communities, have no electricity, computers and internet access to meet most of the CALA requirements.