State Universities reportedly failed to meet the government’s deadline to complete the 2019/2020 deadline by the 31st of August due to a spike in COVID-19 infections in July 2020, The Chronicle reports.
This was after the Higher and Tertiary Education, Innovation, Science and Technology Development Ministry gave universities a deadline to complete the academic year by 31 August but face to face lectures were suspended due to a spike in COVID-19 cases that started in the last week of July.
Speaking about the development, Tertiary Education Minister Professor Amon Murwira said:
They will overshoot it (deadline) because you know there was an intense spike of (Covid-19) in July and after that incident in Chinhoyi (University of Technology) and we took precaution to close. But lectures were still going on online but because of that spike lectures will overshoot a bit but I’m sure that the academic year is going to be completed
Most of the students are done anyway, we are left with some first-year students here and there and some Masters students here and there. But we are going to finish, some universities are already preparing for the next wave of examinations. But medical students never got away because they are on practice at hospitals. We believe everything will be okay given the circumstances but we are not going to meet the 31st August which we had prepared.
Many Universities are still to conduct final examinations for the previous semester as many factors like the price and availability of data to write the exams online are hindering them from conducting the exams online. Meanwhile, the Primary and Secondary Education will announce the dates for reopening of schools.
More: Chronicle