Zim GBC News | Harare Correspondent
In a major shift for the country’s education sector, Primary and Secondary Education Minister Torerayi Moyo has announced that all schools in Zimbabwe will be required to adopt the Heritage-Based Curriculum (HBC) as their primary syllabus by the year 2027.
The move is aimed at reshaping the nation’s graduates from being “job seekers” into “job creators” by grounding their education in the country’s rich natural and cultural resources.
A Unified System
Speaking in the Senate last week, Minister Moyo outlined that Zimbabwe currently operates three distinct types of curricula, a situation the new policy seeks to streamline.
Currently, government, council, and mission schools predominantly follow the Heritage-Based Curriculum. Meanwhile, several private and trust schools offer both the HBC and the Cambridge curriculum, which is administered by Cambridge Assessment International Education.
A small number of international institutions, such as the Harare International School, cater to expatriate and diplomatic families by offering the International Baccalaureate (IB).
“As of now, we have three curricula,” Minister Moyo explained.
“The Heritage-Based Curriculum is taught in Government schools, council schools and church schools. Other private schools offer Heritage-Based Curriculum. We also have what we call the Association of Trust Schools (ATS) and independent colleges and other private schools that offer Cambridge.”
He added,
“We also look at Harare International School, which is for the children of ambassadors. They have what they call the International Baccalaureate, which they use. If we are to look at this law, the Bill was presented to Cabinet, and we said that all the schools in the country are supposed to teach the Heritage-Based Curriculum.”
Pathways for International Programmes
The Minister clarified that schools wishing to continue offering international programmes like Cambridge would not be automatically barred, but they would need to follow a strict new protocol.
Institutions must submit a formal application to the Secretary for Primary and Secondary Education, detailing how they plan to implement the international syllabus alongside the mandatory national Heritage-Based Curriculum.
Minister Moyo emphasized that the policy change was driven by concerns that some educational institutions were neglecting Zimbabwean history and indigenous languages in favour of foreign content.
The HBC is designed to correct this by centering learning on local realities and fostering an entrepreneurial mindset among students.
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