By Catherine Sasman
WINDHOEK
The Office of the Under Secretary in the Ministry of Education issued a statement to the ministry’s regional directors last Friday, urging them to maintain the status quo regarding Grade 10 failures.
“Given the limitation of space and resource constraints,” reads the directive, “only where a place is available in a school will any Grade 10 repeater be allowed to repeat following the existing procedures of allowing those who are still under age to repeat. Therefore the normal procedures which have been applied over the years in this regard will still have to be adhered to; nothing has changed in this regard.”
The directive continues: “All those Grade 10 repeaters currently seeking places in formal schools based on the announcement/decision should be advised to seek admission with NAMCOL as has been the case before.”
It states that the ministry in consultation with NAMCOL would endeavour to increase face-to-face learning sessions, including holiday classes to be held three times a year for such Grade 10 repeaters.
In the meantime, the directive said, learners and parents should be advised that full-time repeating, “in as much as it may sound attractive, has serious implications on the learner because they stand to lose all their points obtained in 2007 with no guarantee that by repeating, they will pass all their subjects with better symbols than before”.
“With the NAMCOL option, they build on the points they already have and concentrate only on those subjects they performed badly in.”
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