Rauna Kalola
Education stakeholders in Erongo region met last week in Swakopmund to attempt to revive excellence in education. The action follows the devastating results of the NSSCO and NSSCAS levels nationally and in the region last year.
The meeting was held under the theme, ‘Revival Towards Educational Excellence’. The region is set to conduct a series of activities to ensure rival of education excellence. It will develop intervention plans and strategies which includes a strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT) analysis of the education sector in the region, monthly monitoring reports, principal reports, time-plans and training of education officers amongst other interventions.
Speaking at the occasion, Erongo governor Neville Andre said the outcome of the 2022 results is a responsibility of all stakeholders and thus the need to collaborate on efforts to revive the education system.
“Education is like a tripod. I am illustrating this so that we see that education is not only a teacher’s responsibility, but a societal responsibility. Any blame game will not take us further, but planning together and implementing together will,” he said.
The governor further called on the education directorate to hold a similar meeting after the mid-term examination in order to review progress and prepare learners for final examinations.
In a bid to motivate the stakeholders, Nathalia /Goagoses, a former teacher and deputy minister in the Ministry of Urban and Rural Development, shared her experiences as a teacher and urged them to be extraordinary.
“During this revival year, we should declare and transform ourselves as extraordinary school leaders and teachers and this calls for character, commitment and courage,” she said.
/Goagoses called on education players to be accountable and do away with the blame game. “Accountability is not blaming, and the greatest feature of leadership is accountability,” she added.
The region is ranked fourth in the 2022 NSSCO and sixth in the NSSCAS level examinations. This is a decrease from the previous years. The 2022 results indicate that, out of 2 518 candidates in the NSSCO level examination, only 593 candidates qualified for NSSCAS. Out of 3 324 junior secondary certificate candidates, 1 581 candidates passed, which represented a 47% pass rate.
Speakers highlighted absenteeism, lack of teaching and learning resources, lack of parental involvement, lack of commitment, nepotism, drugs and lack of discipline among the greatest contributors to poor performance in the region.