Education minister Anna Nghipondoka has labelled the performance of the part-time grade 12 ordinary and higher-level results for 2021 as ‘disheartening’.
Ordinary candidates performed poorly in most subjects with larger entries.
English as a second language has about 57% of ungraded candidates, followed by commerce subjects such as accounting, business studies, and economics, of which 30% are ungraded.
A similar or worse trend is also observed in the overall performance for higher-level candidates across subjects with higher entries.
Accounting shows a poor performance with about 87% of candidates ungraded. Mathematics and Geography both have more than 60% of candidates ungraded.
The results reflect a poor performance across the board, with 28% of candidates not graded.
In her announcement of the final round of the 2021 examination results, Nghipondoka said, “this should be a concern to all stakeholders and requires collaborative efforts to improve the performance.”
Last year, 40 362 candidates sat for the exam across 133 examination centres.
This shows a decrease of 1 525 candidates comprising 3.6% compared to 41 887 in 2020.
Of all those who registered for the exam, 16 594 were recorded as absent from different subjects.
“It is disheartening that despite resources allocated for the part-time candidates through the government subvention for their national examination, some candidates were absent,” she said.
She also mentioned that she was informed that the majority of candidates do not attend face-to-face contact sessions that take place during school holidays and they are also reluctant to submit required assessment activities that could assist them to monitor their progress.
“This is showing a lack of accountability on the part of the candidates by not maximising opportunities granted towards successful completion of their education, despite the second chance offered,” she said.