St Peter's Kubatana

St. Peter's Kubatana
St. Peter's Kubatana
Address
	High Glen Road, Glen Norah; Harare; Zimbabwe
Information
Established	1963; 61 years ago

St. Peter's Kubatana (SPK) is a vocational training centre and high school in Glen Norah, Harare and in Glen Norah, Zimbabwe. The centre was established in 1971 by a Jesuit priest Fr. Anthony Davis SJ as a school of technology offering the young men and women technical skills to help them in life. The centre is popular for training young people in both academic and non-academic disciplines that include welding, sewing and motor mechanics.

St Peter's Kubatana has an Industrial Training College which was established in 1971 by a Jesuit priest Fr Anthony Davis SJ as a school of technology offering the young men and women technical skills to help them in life.

History

Different sources have offered different dates of when St Peter's Kubatana was founded with some accounts noting 1963, some 1971, some 1973 and some, 1978. The centre was founded by Jesuits in Zimbabwe and on their website, note 1971 as the year of the founding of the St Peter'ss Kubatana Industrial Training College.^[1]

The centre was established as a private training institution providing three year post-secondary artisan training courses in carpentry, building, machine shop engineering, and motor mechanics. At that time, Africans were effectively debarred from the white-dominated craft tie, artisan) apprenticeship training scheme which was based on employer sponsorship and with most training being done on the job.0 The centre was originally conceived as an alternative training route for Africans Wanting to be artisans.

After the country's political independence in l980 and the rapid dismantlement of racially segregated training provision the centre continued to provide its three year post-secondary training, but this was regarded as a preparation for rather than an alternative to craft apprenticeship.

But, since most SPK students already had the minimum entry academic qualifications for craft apprenticeship, the training was essentially duplicative and thus unnecessary. It was decided therefore to change the form of training provision at SPK. Since 1984, students joined SPK after completing two years of secondary education, and during their two remaining years at school they received a combined academic and vocational training. Thus, in addition to studying for their '0'levels, each student wuold spend about a third of their time being trained in a vocational trade following the Zimbabwe National Craft Certificate (ZNCC).