Keetmanshoop
From cracked eggs come no chicken and from no input comes no output – the dismal performance of //Karas in both the grade 10 and 12 2015 results have left everyone asking “what went wrong?”
//Karas regional leaders, principals, teachers, schoolboard members, learners and other stakeholders gathered for a consultative meeting at Suiderlig High School on Wednesday to take stock of the region’s poor performance – looking at what led to the poor results and how to change them to positive outcomes this year.
Speaking at the event the //Karas Regional Governor Lucia Basson said the results are an embarrassment and the performance does not reflect the billions of dollars the government spends on education.
“Unfortunately the taxpayers do not get value for the investment made in education,” she said in referring to the N$11.3 billion allocated to the Ministry of Education, Arts and Culture for the 2015/16 financial year.
She urged all stakeholders to join hands to ensure the results in the region improve, saying individuals should show genuine leadership and acknowledge where they didn’t give their best input, instead of exonerating themselves from having had a hand in the dismal performance of learners.
Basson stated that it is now up to the educators to craft intervention strategies for the improvement of teaching and learning outcomes during this year, instead of pointing fingers at each other.
“Let’s not start with a finger-pointing, blame game here, but rather keep ourselves constructively busy with the analysis of what might have led to the poor performance and how we can go about in turning the tide,” she said.
Explaining why schools performed poorly in the region, the Kaitsi !Gubeb Combined School principal, whose school is first from the bottom in the region’s Grade 10 ranking, said there are a number of factors that have contributed to the dismal performance.
Only one out of 29 learners that sat for exams passed to the next grade at the Kaitsi !Gubeb Combined School, which is a 3 percent pass rate for the Berseba-based school and makes it first from the bottom in the region.
The school’s principal Stanlea Uenuseb said a number of factors have contributed to the eye-sore results, such as absenteeism of learners and teachers, overcrowded classes, indiscipline among learners and visionless learners that go to school without really grasping the importance of education and thus they are not interested in their schoolwork.
He further explained that parents are choosing schools in the urban areas. So schools in the urban areas end up taking in brilliant learners and reject failures, who are then all left to come to schools in the rural areas and this process increases the poor performance of those schools.
“Urban schools reject failures, but we can’t reject them because if we do we then kick them out of the education system, so we retain them and give them a second chance to fail us again,” he said.
He added that the transfer system is also a contributing factor as learners are sent to the next grade without mastering the basic competencies in their current grades and the failing trend usually continues.
Uenuseb indicated that normally the transfer rate at some rural schools is 50 percent or even more, meaning half of the learners end up moving to a higher grade without having passed the grade.
He further pointed to the reluctance of qualified and experienced teachers to teach at rural schools and the shortage of teachers over long periods as some of the factors that hinder the provision of quality education that can yield better results.
The meeting also saw principals of the best performing schools in the region sharing their recipes of success. Group discussions were conducted and recommendations and resolutions will be made later.