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Manicaland Bureau
PRIMARY schools in Mutare came out tops in the 2017 Grade Seven examination results that were released last week. Manicaland provincial education director Mr Edward Shumba told The Herald last week that he was happy most schools in the province had performed well, but was quick to single out those situated in Mutare as having performed very well.

“We have Chancellor Primary School where there were 39 pupils with five units each, Mutare Junior had 28, Baring 22, Chikanga 14, Murahwa 16 and Dangamvura 12. Outside Mutare there was St Joseph (Makoni) with 17 and Mt Melleray with 18. That is the information I have at the moment, but as you can see, these schools did well.

“In three weeks time all schools will have done an analysis of their performance before taking them to the district, then the province and ultimately national. At that point we will have the percentage pass rate for each school and that of the entire province. From there we can tell how we would have fared against the rest of the country,” commented Mr Shumba.

He congratulated the eight schools for flying the province’s flag high saying they could even do better. Asked to comment on which subjects most schools had recorded the lowest pass rates, he said Agriculture and Shona had proved problematic for most pupils.

“I think that the problem stemmed from the fact that when it was announced in 2014 that Agriculture would be examinable for Grade Sevens in 2017, nobody took the announcement seriously. There was a lot of laxity, as most people — teachers and pupils thought it was just a prank and not anything serious.

“For Shona, I blame parents for forbidding children from using the language preferring to use English through and through. The normal thing is that the mother tongue should always be the language of instruction, but this is not the case with most parents now who feel that Shona is inferior to other languages hence they discourage children from using it,” he said.

Mr Shumba challenged schools to take all subjects seriously, as those few subjects that pupils, and in some cases parents, found boring and less exciting would always fetch them low marks in the examination, essentially ruining their chances of getting the best grades.