2018-01-25Staff Report 2 Albertina Nakale Windhoek-Namibian College of Open Learning (NAMCOL) director, Dr Heroldt Murangi has estimated they have thus far registered about 14,000 grade 10 and 12 learners who did not acquire pass marks last year. The number is expected to increase taking into consideration that many grade 10 and 12 learners did not make it last year. In December, Murangi revealed NAMCOL can only accommodate 15,000 learners countrywide this year, despite the sad reality that more than 18,000 full-time learners failed their grade 10 examinations last year. In an interview with New Era this week on the progress made since the registration started a week ago, Murangi estimated that about 2,000 grade 10 learners registered online during the first week, while an estimated 5,000 grade 12 learners also registered during the same period until last Thursday. Those who registered online did so at 25 NAMCOL centres out of the 138 centres countrywide. Equally, he estimated that during the first week, NAMCOL also manually registered about 7,000 of both grade 10 and 12, which gives an approximation of about 14,000 in total of those who registered thus far. Only 22,462 (55.3 percent) qualified for admission to grade 11 in 2018 out of 40,599 full-time candidates, who sat for the grade 10 final examinations last year. This means a whopping 18,137 learners failed to make the 23 points pass mark and will have to repeat the same grade if they are 17 years of age and younger. Equally, out of 22,091 full-time candidates who registered for Grade 12 Ordinary Level in 2017, only about 8,632 students qualified for tertiary education. However, he described the registration process as smooth, saying this week was slow compared to the first week when learners rushed to various NAMCOL centres to get a place. Further, he said priority subjects such as English, which are in high demand, are full but they still have some study materials available. “I encourage people to come and register. We really don’t want a situation where people are crying and running to the ministers that NAMCOL ran out of books. But I am happy with the registration process. It’s the first time we are running this online registration and it's really smooth,” he noted. Murangi said they started yesterday with their tertiary level registration which will run until February 1. Asked on claims that NAMCOL will no longer offer face-to-face sessions, he rubbished such claims as untrue. “I don’t know where it is coming from. Namibians are good at telling lies and speculating things.” According to him, grade 12 learners have three options; one being that students at some centres go for the normal way of the three-hour subjects per week. The other option is through distance learning where learners study on their own and come for vacation workshops during school holidays. The last one is the block tuition, which was introduced last year. As part of its strategy to increase the pass rate among its learners, NAMCOL has introduced a block tuition system, which will be implemented during school holiday breaks, only at selected centres. The first block tuition takes place between March 20 to 24, while the second is from May 1-19 leading to the one from August 29 until September 1. Between the years 2000 and 2016 the number of grade 12 enrollees at NAMCOL swelled from 20,018 to 41,800 people. 2018-01-25Staff Report 2
