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Sifelani Innocent Features Correspondent 

• The reduced contact time meant that there was no adequate coverage of syllabi content and yet the examinations questions were derived from the entire syllabi. Furthermore, inadequate contact time resulted in insufficient preparation for the examinations.

• Lack of reading and comprehension skills in Indigenous and English languages is a receipt for failure as educational achievement is so much dependent on the two skills.

• An individual learner’s effort is another critical factor which determines success. Failure by learners to put concerted effort in their studies contributes to undesirable academic achievement.

The nation is currently engaged in a raging debate on the reasons of high failure rate for 2020 Grade 7 national pass rate which stands at 37.11 percent and the pass rate represents a decrease of 9.79  percent from 2019’s pass rate of 46.1 percent.

“Who is to blame for this undesirable performance”, is a question which remains unanswered as several opinions are being thrown around. In an effort to have a much broader appreciation of the factors which affect success, it must be noted that desirable academic performance is not a result of one year’s effort.

Rather, the performance is dependent on the child’s learning experiences right from birth.

The following factors affect learning process and subsequent achievements;Concepts coverage. Inadequate coverage of syllabi content could have been the leading causal factor for the poor pass rate.

It is a fact that learners had reduced teacher-learner contact time in year 2020 mainly as a result of Covid-19 restrictions which included schools closure from March 24 to September 28 2020.

Following the closure of schools and during the lockdown period, only 25 percent of learners in rural areas engaged in any learning activities (ZIMSTAT report on Monitoring COVID-19 impact on households in Zimbabwe, November 2020).

On the other end, 70 percent of learners in urban areas engaged in any learning activities.

It can be ascertained that learners in rural areas were more affected by schools closure than their urban counterparts.

This therefore explains the disparity in pass rates between rural and urban schools with the former generally attaining low pass rates.

The reduced contact time meant that there was no adequate coverage of syllabi content and yet the examinations questions were derived from the entire syllabi.

Furthermore, inadequate contact time resulted in insufficient preparation for the examinations.

Going by this aforementioned observation, high failure rate was inevitable.

Just like the “garbage in, garbage out” principle, performance of learners depended on the limited content they were exposed to in year 2020.

It has been observed that coverage of concepts was also partly affected by lack of requisite teaching aids. Foundational skills. Underdeveloped foundational skills could be another factor with an impact on the academic achievement of learners.

Failure to fully master, especially, the infant education (ECD A to Grade 2) concepts leads to an adverse effect in the performance of learners in higher grades/levels. Lack of reading and comprehension skills in Indigenous and English languages is a receipt for failure as educational achievement is so much dependent on the two skills.

Foundational skills are fundamental in that they serve as a basis, the foundation, for supporting additional tasks and learning.Home environment.

It must be noted that learning extends beyond the four walls of a classroom.

Home environments which are not stimulating and fail to provide opportunities for children to learn have an impact on learners’ academic achievement.

Home practices and attitudes of family members which do not value education, negatively affect learners’ zeal to strive for excellence in their endeavors.

Failure by parents or guardians to supervise and monitor learners’ homework is another practice which works against learners’ success as mastery of concepts is sometimes achieved through practice done at home.

Motivation. Unmotivated learners are less likely to do well in their academic pursuits as motivation is necessary to energize individuals for concerted efforts in their undertakings.

Lack of learning materials such as text books and writing exercise books, and unsupportive parents may be demotivating factors leading to learners’ loss of interest in their educational activities.

The general classroom environment and the school’s outlook are also factors with an impact on the learner’s motivation. Uninviting classrooms and school environments can discard learners’ learning motivation and zeal which subsequently leads to poor performance.

For some learners, motivation is adversely affected by perpetual experience of failure in academic work.

Individual effortAn individual learner’s effort is another critical factor which determines success.

Failure by learners to put concerted effort in their studies contributes to undesirable academic achievement.

No one single factor is solely responsible for the performance of learners; there is rather interplay between the factors.

To improve the learning outcomes of all learners, there is need for empirical evidence which will help determine the precise factors which lead to poor pass rates.

Informed interventions strategies can only be derived from research evidence.

Sifelani Innocent, Educational Psychologist. The author can be contacted on: [email protected]