WINDHOEK - More than 10 500 learners, out of 24 932, who sat for the Grade 12 Namibia Senior Secondary Certificate (NSSC) Ordinary Level examination last year, qualify for admission to tertiary institutions for degree courses. 

This is slightly better compared to 9 524 learners who qualified for university admission in 2018. According to education deputy minister Anna Nghipondoka, this shows an improvement of 1.7 percent, with 987 more candidates qualifying for university admission. 

The deputy minister added that 23.3 percent of the 10 511 learners, representing 5 821 candidates, qualify for university admission with a C or 3 and better grade in English at respective levels. 

Furthermore, 39.7 percent candidates compared to 37.8 percent in 2018 obtained between an E and an F grade in English and may qualify for admission for diploma and certificate courses at other institutions of higher learning. For admission to degree programmes in Namibia, the minimum requirements are set at 25 points in five subjects, including English. 

There are, however, lower requirements set for diploma and certificate courses. “These figures exclude the part-time candidates because they build up subject credits over a number of years and normally meet the university admission requirements only after a number of examinations,” Nghipondoka said.  

Nghipondoka also said the results reflect a different picture than the performance of the class of 2018 with the performance in English, Mathematics and Physical Science with D and better grades all indicating a poorer showing.  The same trend is observed in Mathematics as well, with a slight drop of 0.8 percent from 42.0 percent to 41.2 percent, Nghipondoka stated.

English target missed
According to Nghipondoka, the 2019 candidates missed the English set target of 35 percent achieved in 2018, but dropped last year to 33.7 percent, prompting suggestions for a national conference on English. “A national conference for English should be held as early as possible before end of March 2020 to unpack the reasons for the persistent poor performance at schools,” stated Nghipondoka. The deputy minister said in 2018, in order to get to the bottom of low performance in English as a second language, the education ministry, commissioned research to be done to inform the ministry on the persistent poor performance. She said the research is completed and the “report was available, very insightful and speaks volume.” In Biology, candidates did remarkably well with an improvement of 1.9 percent. She said the performance of candidates in Physical Science is a cause of concern and the senior education officer under the leadership of the deputy director should get to the bottom of this. “Carry out an investigation as to what went wrong and work out strategies to remedy that situation without any delay,” she implored. Amongst others, the deputy minister instructed the Directorate of National Examinations and Assessment (DNEA) must conduct national training on examiner reports in the above-mentioned subjects before the end of February, once the reports are available.  She also directed for schools to put related action plans in place to improve on quality teaching and provision of resource and if need be reallocation of subjects to teachers according to their field of expertise as far as possible. Suitable placement of teachers must be prioritised. Nghipondoka thanked the teachers, head of departments, principals and regional office officials and tutors at registered part time centres who worked very hard to make it possible for more of candidates to meet the admission requirement at the institutions of higher learning. She said that candidates who could not perform according to their expectations, all is not lost. They should continue to improve their results at registered part-time institutions by registering on time and seeing their studies through until they have written their final examination.