Program Overview

This program is brought to you by The Ministry of Primary and Secondary Education, the legal and constitutional custodian of Primary and Secondary schools in Zimbabwe in collaboration with HTI. The main purpose of Career Management is to address (bridge) the skills gap.

What is skills gap?
The skills gap refers to the disparity between the skills an employer expects their employees to have and the actual skills employees possess. This mismatch makes it challenging for employers to fill open positions.

This gap has widened even further in recent years. The skills gap is influenced by various factors, including an educational system that hasn't kept pace with the evolving economy, poor education, an evolving workforce, and a lack of industry experience or required training for candidates. It is crucial for the education sector to identify and understand any skills gaps present and how they limit company performance, especially in the context of new technologies transforming many business sectors.

The importance of informed decisions when making career choices.
The program provides practical knowledge giving students hands-on experience and all the necessary information and skills needed to make informed decisions when making Career choices. The program makes an early intervention to students career choices. This system will inter connect and share vital information between the education and the labor sectors on real time data, in terms of careers skills and labor demands providing a key component to economic growth. This process is paramount for students in order for them to identify c areer options and narrow them to make one career decision. Students can then concentrate and specialize in a specific area at an early age thereby giving learners the much needed direction and providing clarity regarding future career development. This motivates students to utilize their strengths and skills as well as improving on their weaknesses. This helps to understand the skills and knowledge that is required to fulfill both the nation’s and individual goals.

The importance of Career Management

Bridging the skills gap in schools is crucial for several reasons:

Future Workforce Preparation: Schools play a pivotal role in preparing the future workforce. By addressing the skills gap, schools can ensure that students are equipped with the necessary competencies to thrive in the evolving job market

Industry Relevance: Aligning educational curricula with the skills demanded by industries is essential. By addressing the skills gap, schools can ensure that students are prepared to meet the needs of the job market, thereby enhancing their employability

Economic Growth: Addressing the skills gap in schools is vital for fostering economic growth. By equipping students with relevant skills, schools contribute to the development of a highly skilled workforce, which in turn drives economic prosperity.

Social Equality: Bridging the skills gap in schools is essential for promoting social equality. It ensures that all students, regardless of their background, have access to the skills needed for success in the workforce.

Students must understand our local environment and get a hands on experience which enables them to develop a sense of belonging to the local community and the nation at large. Indigenous knowledge represents an important component towards national development issues. The world has become dynamic, the environment that we are living in is changing at a fast pace. Therefore, for our nation to survive this technological error, we have to equip our students with all the necessary k nowledge for them to be able to react to technological changes at a global level.

Students learn best through first-hand experiences and going out into the local environment will enable students to explore and get the vital hands on experience that expose them to different features found in the country. Students can then start to appreciate our own cultural heritage and identity, as well as respect and understand the value of our local environment which then inspires them to continuously improve our environment and to acquire knowledge that provides problem-solving strategies for local communities and the nation at large.

Students need to have an understanding on how Zimbabwe can come up with sustainable measures for development from our natural resources. Particularly on areas such as our mining and agricultural sectors and how to embark on scientific research to make our own traditional food and medicine. This is crucial for ensuring that local communities can continue to add value to the raw materials and fully benefit from the local ecosystems in a sustainable way.

Career management is not a single event but a continuing process that is necessary for adapting changing in demands of the 21st Century economy. The program aims to identify career programs that add value to the economy. This program will identify and equip students on vital careers needed in the country. With this system, when learners go for A level they will have already started to advance in their careers. This brings us to a point, that when universities start recruiting they are recruiting trainee professionals in their careers such as farmers, engineers, students with a purpose to solve current problems that the nation is facing or will be facing. These trainee professionals will already be having a purpose on what they want to achieve towards building the nation.

This program will:

  1. Carry out a Skills Audit analysis of the students to provide a skills gap provision, focusing on bridging the skills economy gap.
  2. Ensure that all schools will be enlightened on the importance of career management and how it relates to the national economy.
  3. Ensure that all students are clear about their career options and their relationship to the economy and how the careers will provide solutions to our national economy.