Mwashita Academy

About Us

Mwashita Academy is an international private school that is located 45 kilometres west of Mutare in Manicaland, Zimbabwe. The school is a full house boarding facility that caters for form one to form four. Mwashita Academy is an educational institution that is predominantly funded through tuition fees and levies from students and of course from other private sources.

Mwashita Academy is a client-focused and result driven private school that provides broad-based learning approaches and experience at an affordable fee that does not in any way put a hole in the pockets of students and parents alike.

Mwashita Academy strives to offer standard and professional teaching services in a highly secured and conducive learning environment to all students. The Academy ensures that it works hard to meet and surpass all the Academy’s students’ expectations and educational goals whenever they enrol in the Academy.

At Mwashita Academy, our students’ overall best interest always come first, and everything we do is guided by our values and professional ethics. We ensure that we hire professional teachers in various subjects who are well experienced and passionate in imparting knowledge to students at various learning levels.

Mwashita Academy always demonstrates her commitment to sustainability, both individually and as an educational organisation, by actively participating in our communities and integrating sustainable business practices wherever possible.

We ensure that we hold ourselves accountable to the highest standards by meeting our students’ needs precisely and completely. We cultivate a working environment that provides a human, sustainable approach to earning a living, and living in our world, for our partners, employees and for our students.

Our overall business goal is to position our private school to become the leading tutorial brand in the educational industry in the whole of Zimbabwe and SADC and also to be amongst the top 10 private schools in SADC within the first 10 years of operation.

What makes Mwashita Academy unique

Mwashita Academy is a unique boarding school because of the following:

a)         Essential Coding Skills

It is very challenging these days for kids to predict what they would want to become when they are grown-ups simply because their future jobs might not be in existence yet. Kids can nevertheless be prepared for their future careers by learning certain skills that can be adapted to any job. The skills include the ability to collaborate, problem solve, project management, critical analysis, pitching, storytelling and critical thinking. Instead of one becoming a doctor, one can become part of a creative and collaborative team that builds and codes a robot to perform delicate surgery instead. Experts agree that coding is the language of the future, and school administrators, politicians and parents are increasingly pushing to make it an educational priority.

At Mwashita Academy , we teach students the skills of the future apart from teaching the secondary school subjects. That is precisely the reason why we are a called an ACADEMY and not an ordinary school. At Mwashita Academy , we believe that learning to code is more than ‘becoming a developer.’ Learning to code allows students to be creative with technology, develop logical thinking and problem solving skills, learn about computational thinking, and build confidence, and have fun, while being outcomes focused. We ensure that kids entrusted in our care will learn problem solving, creative technological approaches, and clusters of skills in entrepreneurship, design thinking, creative coding-the skills researchers globally, and we internally, believe are the key skills for the future workforce. Coding will be introduced right from Form One as a non-promotional subject but as part of extra-curricular activities of the school which shall be compulsory to all the kids.

At Mwashita Academy , we want our littlest coders to make the first small, but important steps to becoming creators of technology, not just consumers. We want to look back one day and say, this “Mark Zuckerberg” is a product of Mwashita Academy! This is achievable with the support parents are prepared to give to our school. As the world becomes ever more digitised, employers are looking for people with specific ICT skills. It’s not a coincidence that big-data analysts and social media experts are among the most sought-after employees.

Mwashita Academy is convinced that coding will soon become as important as reading or writing. ICT for children and youngsters has to mean more than just computer games, despite their educational value. We can’t risk the digital natives of today becoming the illiterates of tomorrow just because they don’t understand computer code. Coding is the art of telling a computer how to perform complex tasks. Once one knows how to code, one can create virtual worlds within the computer where the only limit on what is possible is one’s imagination. Mwashita Academy wants to put this power into the hands and hearts of every child that passes through our institution. Anyone can learn to code. In a few hours, one can pick up the basic skills and in a few weeks, one will be able to build useful applications and websites.

b)         Sustainable Agriculture

Mwashita Academy understands that the educational system has proven to be a highly effective medium through which issues of important social change influence the youngest members of our society, and this influence can be used to change our food culture. Mwashita Academy hopes to embark on a project that introduces the main goals of sustainable agriculture. With this project, the school endeavours to develop an understanding of how sustainable farming can both enhance food production and ensure that natural resources are managed in the best way possible for long-term sustainability. Mwashita Academy wishes to provide ideas about ways in which the theme of sustainable agriculture may be integrated into the child’s education system as part of the process of re-orienting education towards a sustainable future.

The goal of sustainable agriculture is to meet society’s food needs in the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. Practitioners of sustainable agriculture seek to integrate three main objectives into their work: a healthy environment, economic profitability, and social and economic equity. While much progress has been made towards food security in recent decades, without further urgent and coordinated action, poverty, hunger and malnutrition will continue to undermine the lives of hundreds of millions of people now and in years to come. The world’s population reached 6 billion people in 1999 and is expected to reach 8.5 billion by 2025, when 83% of the world will be living in the South. However, our long-term ability to meet growing demands for food often seems uncertain. Thus, one of our greatest challenges is increasing food production in a sustainable manner so that everyone can be adequately and nutritiously fed without over-exploiting the Earth’s ecosystems. Mwashita Academy  wishes to introduce the main goals of sustainable agriculture and to the young ones in the society from an early age. Pursuant to this, it wishes to develop an understanding of how sustainable farming can both enhance food production and ensure that natural resources are managed in the best way possible for long-term sustainability. Mwashita Academy also wishes to provide ideas about ways in which the theme of sustainable agriculture may be integrated into the curriculum as part of the process of re-orienting education towards a sustainable future. Mwashita Academy will aim to ensure that the kids that pass through the Academy should be able:

• To understand the nature and importance of sustainable agriculture;
• To understand ways in which different agricultural practices can alter the environment either positively or negatively;
• To analyse examples of farming practices that are economically viable, environmentally sound and socially responsible; and
• To appreciate how enquiry learning can be used to promote an appreciation of sustainable agriculture in the school curriculum.

Education about sustainability issues is an important goal at Mwashita Academy and to live the talk, the school resolved to use biogas digesters for their waste management system as shown below.

By using such a system, Mwashita Academy is poised to empower the youth, teach them about their local food system, engage them in meaningful, hands-on learning activities.

Using sustainable agriculture enables Mwashita Academy to produce fresh, healthy and minimally processed foods that are served at the school. Aimed at educating children about where and how their food is grown, strengthening local economies and supporting healthy eating habits, the whole project of sustainable agriculture is geared to advance the following goals:

• Promote children’s health by providing fresh, healthy and minimally processed foods in schools and supporting the development of healthy eating habits.
• Enhance children’s “food literacy” by familiarizing them with foods grown nearby, teaching them how and where their food is grown, building knowledge about how to prepare healthy foods, and educating them about the health, nutrition, social and environmental impacts of food choices.
• Strengthen local economies by expanding markets for small and mid-size agricultural producers and food entrepreneurs whose products have typically been unavailable in school meal programs.
• Build vibrant locally oriented food systems by fostering positive relationships and increase understanding of local food systems among children, farmers, parents, educators and school districts, healthcare professionals, and other community members.
• Advance environmental stewardship, where practicable, by supporting more sustainable food production methods, reducing reliance on long distance transportation, and reducing food waste.
• Explore factors such as expected population growth, food waste, and various positive and negative factors impacting sustainable agriculture.

Sustainable agriculture is critical in the global effort to eradicate hunger and poverty. Hunger is often caused by food waste and inequality of distribution, not scarcity. There are an estimated 1.4 billion people living in extreme poverty and about 870 million people that are hungry, malnourished and food insecure (have difficulty acquiring food). Unfortunately, about one-third of our current global food supply is wasted. In developed countries food is thrown out and over consumed, and in developing countries food is lost to unreliable storage and transportation.

By teaching school children at Mwashita Academy sustainable agriculture, we hope to enable them to learn about protecting the environment, sustainable energy, and nutrition, through activities including interactive games, crafts, and discussions. Mwashita Academy believes that sustainable agriculture education helps our leaners to appreciate and associate with agriculture because the subject is very important to continue for generations to come, to change their perceptions, encourage their involvement unsustainable  agriculture activities and to understand issues of the environment and climate change. It is through sustainable agriculture that their full understanding of the environment they live in is understood.

Mwashita Academy wants to ensure that your children can grow up learning about the benefits of growing their own food as they connect with nature and improve the environment, all while having fun with organic farming. It is very important to teach children about ecology and nature so that they can become passionate about reducing negative impacts on the globe. Starting at an early age, they can conserve nature, reduce wastage and learn about sustainability.

c) Guidance and counselling

Schools are regarded as social institutions which are supposed to help societies to develop and maintain their cultural values. As an institution, Mwashita Academy aims at developing and producing learners that that are assertive and influential to the society. The Academy aims at providing meaningful guidance and counselling to all learners. The guidance and counselling (G&C) programme must cover all the major areas of development.

G&C is taken as a way of making meaning out of life. The basic aims of the G&C programme are to focus on the optimal, holistic development of all learners.  While it is realised that the development of learners will continue, it is expected that upon completion of high school education students should have a clear idea of their identity, apply knowledge in decision making, be able to function effectively and be socially responsible and above all have basic career knowledge.

The Academy implements G&C basing on the following purposes

• Prepare learners for adult life.
• Help leaners acquire appropriate lifelong attitudes and values that will help them become productive and active members of their communities.
• Help learners become assertive and develop critical thinking skills.
• Help maintain order and discipline at the school.
• Improve the relations of teachers and learners in building friendly relations.
• Inform learners about industry and job requirements.
• Help learners understand effects of social life such as teenage pregnancy and substance abuse.

By introducing G&C in an organised manner the school hopes to develop learners that are fully equipped to meet the challenges of the first twentieth century. The Academy achieves this by employing highly qualified personnel in the field of G&C who would assist learners in resisting drug and substance abuse.

Benefits for Students:

• Monitors data to facilitate student improvement.
• Provides strategies for closing the achievement gap because some students need more. 
• Ensures equitable access to educational opportunities.
• Fosters advocacy for students.
• Supports development of skills to increase student success. 

Benefits for Parents or Guardians:

• Provides support in advocating for their children’s academic career and personal-social development.
• Supports partnerships in their children’s learning and career planning.
• Ensures academic planning for every student.
• Ensures access to school and community resources.
• Provides training and informational workshops.
• Connects to community and school based services.
• Provides data for continuous information on student progress.
• Promotes a philosophy that some students need more and seeks to ensure they receive it.

Benefits for the Community:

The entire community benefits from the Counseling programme because:

• All students in the entire school system are served.
• A clearly defined curriculum provides information about the program to the community.
• Business, industry, and labour can participate actively in the program.
• A potential work force is provided with decision-making skills and pre-employment skills.

Benefits for Teachers:

• Promotes an interdisciplinary team approach to address student needs and educational goals. 
• Supports development of classroom management skills.
• Provides a system for co-facilitation of classroom lessons. 
• Supports the learning environment.
• Promotes teaming to increase student achievement.
• Analyzes data to improve school climate and student achievement.

Benefits for Administrators:

• Aligns the Academy Counseling programme with the school’s academic mission.
• Provides a School Counseling program promoting student success.
• Monitors data for school improvement.
• Provides a system for managing a School Counseling programme. 
• Articulates a process for evaluating a School Counseling programme. 
• Uses data to jointly develop School Counseling goals and School Counselor responsibilities.