VELA Primary School in Gwanda has embraced digital and paperless learning, marking a groundbreaking transformation for a rural school across the Thuli River.
The development, made possible through collaboration between the government and its development partners, reflects the ongoing drive to bridge the rural-urban digital divide in education.
On the first day of the new term, lessons began seamlessly as pupils switched on their tablets and accessed exercises without needing traditional textbooks.
Powered by electricity from a solar plant and equipped with tablets provided by a development partner, the school has become a model of modernised learning in rural Zimbabwe.
“Now I do not carry books from home, gone are the days when you would lose your book and fail to write an exercise. The advantage is that now we can write and store our work on the tablets, and we can still revise. It has made our work easy because we can research on the very tablets,” learners said.
The development, which aligns with the Second Republic’s inclusive development agenda, has set the community on a transformative journey.
“We are so happy as parents that our children are now learning computers, and they can use the internet,” a parent said.
“At least our children are now learning like their counterparts in town,” a guardian said.
The adoption of digital education by schools speaks to the government’s inclusive development agenda, as it pursues attaining a digital economy by 2030.
