Herman Jacobs
The state of our education sector demands that a critical turnaround strategy be sought to rescue the system from total failure.
One of the critical failures in the education sector is the norm of only concentrating exit examinations or national examinations at secondary education, namely grades 11 and 12 (Namibian Senior Secondary Ordinary Level) and Namibian Senior Secondary Advanced Subsidiary level).
This practice already shows that the sector does not have a clear plan for the lower phases such as the junior, senior, and junior secondary phases in terms of quality education.
If the system does not have a proper testing strategy, we will have numerous deficiencies in competency achievement throughout the entire basic education sector.
We should be asking ourselves questions such as: are the learners acquiring the necessary skills in the different phases as they progress?
If we have 20 out of 35 learners in every class who cannot read and comprehend the content in grade nine, we sit with a critical problem in reading.
With English as the main medium of instruction from grades four to 12, learners ought to be able to read fluently, and comprehend whatever content they are reading for learning to take place.
The reading deficit comes from the bottom, meaning the junior and senior phases are not doing enough to teach reading, but content.
Especially the junior phase is a critical starting point for any education sector to thrive.
How do we send learners who cannot read and comprehend English to the senior primary phase, and subsequently to the secondary phase where the content is vast and requires extensive reading?
There are tests being taken by learners in grades five and seven, which are in my opinion not enough to evaluate the readiness of these learners for the next phase.
I would recommend that the ministry of education and its curriculum planners revise the curriculum and policies in order to implement competency achievement tests at the end of every phase in order to ensure learners are ready to enter the next phase in mainstream education.
This kind of assessment will address the automatic promotion problem we have in our sector. With such a system, the ministry will address numerous setbacks in education, such as the quality lessons delivery by educators, monitoring and evaluation by instructional leaders, and accountability by the regional directors.
Learners in grades three, seven and nine will write a semi-external examination, based on what they have learned in the phase in order to progress to the next phase.
Here, learners who cannot master the competencies must be retained until the child meets the basic competencies to progress to the next level.
The question of automatic promotion should become a thing of the past.
Schools will be known for their performance on national and regional levels, and best-performing teachers and learners can be acknowledged as well as more support to others who do not perform as required.
These examinations must be planned and executed, similar to those of grades 11 and AS level examinations. This turnaround strategy would give the ministry a grasp on the performance of teachers, heads of department, principals, inspectors and regional directors as they are at the forefront of the instructional process in state schools. I believe this kind of intervention can save our education system, and quality education can be restored.