2015-02-24Staff Report 2 GOBABIS- The Director for Education in the Omaheke Region, Pecka Semba, has appealed to a group of parents of learners attending Otjiuaneho Primary School in Otjinene to return more than one hundred pupils that they forcefully removed from the school last week Monday in protest against the school principal. Last week it was reported that over half of disgruntled parents whose children attend Otjiuaneho Primary School forcefully removed their pupils from the school, in the ongoing protest for the removal of the school principal. Parent are accusing the school principal, Maria Ngava of misadministration, mismanagement of school funds and not turning up for work among other allegations. “I appeal to those parents who took such action to bring the pupils back to school as there is an ongoing investigation by the directorate into the alleged misconduct of the accused,” said Semba told New Era. He said the action taken by the parents is illegal and will affect the academic performance of the learners negatively. This issue has been reported to our directorate and even before that we were investigating issues such as inspectorate reports and sub-directory reports against Ngava,” he said. The Director pleaded with parents to be patient since their concerns were forwarded to Ministry of Education, Permanent Secretary, Alfred IIukena. Meanwhile, Omaheke Region was among the poorest performing schools during the 2014 NSSC Grade 12 Ordinary level examination result announced earlier this year. The region was placed14th compared to 12th in 2013. Otjiuaneho Primary School was among the worst performing schools in the region during 2014. At the time Semba blamed lack of of parental participation in the education of their children as one of the reasons for poor perfomance. According to the Grade 12 examination results released earlier this year, 2014 full-time candidates performed better, especially at grades A, B, C and G, while their performance at grades A* and D remains the same at 0 and -6 percent, respectively, as in 2013. Compared to 2013, the number of full-time candidates decreased by 109 (0.6 percent) to 19 392. “Results of the full-time candidates show that the percentage of graded entries increased from 93 percent to 93.2 percent in 2014. This is a slightly better performance of the 2014 candidates compared to the 2013 candidates. The candidates have performed slightly poorer at grades E and F, which was expected due to the improvement of quality symbols. I have been calling on learners that I do not want poor symbols. Performance has shifted to quality symbols,” said the Minister of Education, Dr David Namwandi, on Wednesday. Out of 19 392 full-time candidates who sat for the Grade 12 Namibia Senior Secondary Certificate (NSSC) Ordinary Level, 8 300 qualify for admission to tertiary institutions, while 1 150 learners obtained points between 20 and 24. 2015-02-24Staff Report 2
