KEETMANSHOOP – Educational authorities in the Hardap Region have vowed to crack down on indiscipline among learners and teachers at schools in the region this year.
The newly adopted zero-tolerance policy on indiscipline at schools follows in the wake of the improvement in Grade 10 results, which the region experienced. The region has achieved higher average results compared to last year enabling it to climb three places up from 13th position to the current 10th position in the national performance ranking.
The Director of Education in the Hardap Region, Mzingisi Gqwede, says learners, parents and teachers should be forewarned that no indiscipline would be tolerated
this year, especially if it affects the performance of learners. Gqwede attributes the academic improvement to the education conference that took place in June last year under the theme ‘Hardap Grade 10s Striving for Academic Excellence’.
“I believe that the implementation of the conference resolutions have had a big role to play in the improvement of the results. Continuing to implement the conference resolutions is likely to see the Hardap Region vying for a position among the top 6 best performing regions in the country,” said Gqwede. The conference resolved to extend learning support to learners even during examination time; to open schools, hostels and teachers resources centres for supervised study hours; the introduction of compulsory afternoon classes for all Grade 10 learners; to revisit the attitudes of teachers and to discourage belittling comments, degrading comments and swearing at learners, which is prevalent among some teachers.
Another key resolution is the introduction of team-building programmes for teachers to address divisions that affect teaching and learning in some schools. In the 2013 Grade 10 national examinations the St Boniface College of the Roman Catholic Church outside Rundu once again emerged as the best performing school, followed by Negumbo Senior Secondary School, Canisianum Roman Catholic School, Edugate Academy, Heroes Combined School (CS) and Oshigambo Secondary School in sixth place.
The six worst performing schools from the bottom were Gam Combined School, Ndoro Memorial Combined School, Adam Steve Combined School, Mabushe Combined School, Vooruitsig Junior Secondary School and Augustineum Secondary School. Female learners also outperformed their male counterparts this year, where 79 learners out of the total of 130 best performers, were girls.
By Jemima Beukes