Time to refocus education system

OLEVELFortious Nhambura Features Writer
Last year 285 260 candidates sat for Zimbabwe Schools Examination Council Ordinary Level examinations. Out of that number only 36 031 candidates passed five subjects and above with a Grade C or better, translating to a paltry 20,72 percent pass rate. This is a 2,32 percentage points increase on 18,4 percent recorded in 2012.
A lot of condemnation has been levelled against schools that failed to make it to the top hundred. Some schools even got condemned for failing to make it to the top 10.

The country’s 21 percent performance compares well with results achieved by those who sat for the public examinations for the past two decades or so.

For nearly three decades now, Zimbabwe’s Ordinary Level pass rate has failed to break the 22 percent mark.

Zimbabwe only managed 21,9 percent in 1984. The Ordinary Level pass rate has always been hovering around 20 percent and even went far down to below 10 percent in 2007.

Even after the full localisation of the public examination in 2003, the national pass rate remained low.

Surely with the amount of resources that parents and Government have invested in the children’s education this is unacceptable if the country is to move forward.

Despite the results comparing very well with the pass rates for the preceding years, the bottom line is that these results are pathetic and disappointing.

Zimbabwe over the years has seen between 78 and 90 percent failure rate at O-Level since 1984 and needs to start questioning itself where it is going wrong. It needs to start seeking ways to engage and harness the valuable resources that are being lost through the academic system.

It is time for Zimbabwe’s education sector to refocus and ensure that the failure rate is minimised and that the hundreds of thousands of children that have been condemned because they were not academically gifted are accommodated to help develop the country.

As the results suggest, a greater number of our children are academically inferior and cannot make the grade. A larger number could also be disadvantaged by circumstances and location of schools.

Emphasis must therefore be put on harnessing the thousands of children that are not academically gifted but surely able in practical areas. Zimbabwe ought to know whether it is really suitable for a developing country like us or not.

Minister of Primary and Secondary Education Lazarus Dokora said there is need to promote technical subjects to give candidates real life skills and enhance transition from school to the world of work.

“Technical-vocational subjects offered at schools need to be retained and in fact increased,” he said.

Minister Dokora said schools should not be judged around academic performance, as if academic achievement is the only measurement of being human but on the making of the total person.

Minister of State for Liaising on Psychomotor Activities in Education and Training Cde Josiah Hungwe concurred saying Government had noted the anomaly. He said the State was moving in to empower young people before they leave school with life skills and abilities that will help them to find gainful employment and sustain themselves, their communities, society and the nation.

Minister Hungwe said Zimbabwe was moving to re-emphasise the dignity of practical work and the promotion of small-scale projects to empower students to sustain their lives and those of their communities.

“Youth unemployment is a global phenomenon and it is generally agreed that it can only be tackled by providing skills training for young school-leavers to enter the workforce immediately equipped with appropriate training that will render them employable.

“It will accord them entrepreneurial skills that will make them masters of their own destinies and enable them to start businesses,” he said.

Some educational analysts say it was important for the country to quickly move away from the colonial type of education that sought to create employee graduates and not employer graduates.

According to Mr Shingai Rukwata Ndoro, it is highly commendable that Zimbabwe has one of the highest literacy rates in Africa.

“We thank the Government for that. However, we need to move beyond the literacy rate and achieve productivity and usefulness of the products of the public education system.”

He said it was time Zimbabwe considers a home-grown curriculum that addresses our development needs, as is happening in Asia, South America and Europe. Our curricula tend to be supply-driven rather than demand-driven.

The Nziramasanga Commission recommended the vocationalisation of the education system with rural schools concentrating on productive sectors in their respective areas.

Mr Ndoro said Zimbabwe cannot label 78-90 percent of its young people as hopeless failures as this creates a citizenry that surrenders or gives up its own deep sense of human worth, causative power and responsibility.

“In my view, a one-size education system that fits all is irrelevant and counter-productive. Apart from a highly needed public sector investment in the infrastructure, the nation needs to reorient and refocus the content or curriculum so that a fish is not judged by its inability to climb a tree.

“We need to have a content or curriculum that makes it possible for a person to identify his/her own natural or inherent abilities, and to develop them into a skill, profession or vocation.

“This identification should be done at the end of primary school education in Grade 7 using a combination of scientific career personality tests and a public examination system. Such tests should be reconfirmed at the end of Form 2,” he said.

He said it should be recommended that the teaching methods should be changed to focus on skills.

A headmaster with a secondary school in Chitungwiza said; “It is this with mind that the Nziramasanga report should be picked up, dusted and implemented. Our problem as a nation is that we have let things to continue for a long time and we still suffering from a disease whose cure we discovered decades ago.

“Let’s promote subjects like building, agriculture, sport, metalwork and woodwork where our children are gifted. Those who are academically talented can still get their focused teaching. A number of our children are gifted in practical subjects but the greatest undoing is that the country tends to focus on the academic side.”

A parent Mr Kudzi Mutaringe said while the economy could have stagnated national progress in the sector as qualified and experienced teachers left in droves or spent much of their time on strike or just loafing around, it is critical to note that pass rate figures have always been on the lower side.

“We have lost so many teachers but let us not run away from the fact the national pass rate has always been disappointing. It is however good that despite the low pass rate at ordinary level our pupils can still read write and communicate.

“This means we can still capture the millions and train then in different practical work that can contribute to development of the nation.

“Why don’t we try specialisation from primary school, maybe from Grade 5 upwards? This will ensure that a child takes the route that he or she is most familiar with,” he said.

Another parent said the nation must interrogate this dismal performance and rectify it.

“We cannot settle for this kind of underachievement and get used to it. We must refuse to get used to failure. Obviously the education sector is putting every effort, energy and thought into trying to run a robustly successful education, but the numbers simply refuse to add up.

Even with so many free internet sites for schools, the pass rate has not improved. Surely with so many educational websites at their disposal for free, teachers and pupils must benefit and use to improve the academic performances.

“It is time we take a stance that will ensure the country does not continue throwing the money down the drain by forcing pupils to do want they are good at,” she added.

It was unfortunate that the country’s education system has a fixation with academic attainment and thus do not record sporting and non-academic excellence.

With the increasing unemployment figures and a highly informalised economy, it is unsustainable to judge success academically and leave out thousands.

Mr Ndoro said: “It is now time to revisit the Nziramasanga commission report and start looking at ways to improve ways to cater for learners’ different needs.

“We cannot procrastinate any longer. An increasing number of the unemployed and a highly informalised economy is unsustainable and a serious threat to the gains of the liberation struggle as it debases and demeans the social and moral fabric of our country.

“Our young people can easily become the entry points for a distorted national discourse, and easy targets for those intending to threaten and destabilise the nation. Such political destabilisation uses the social frustration arising out of high unemployment largely driven by the lack of technical skills and the capacity to create jobs.”

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