TSUMKWE – There are no San learners in Grades 11 and 12 at the Tsumkwe Senior Secondary School in the Otjozondjupa Region this year.
“They all failed Grade 10 over the past two years as they could not read, write or speak English,” Tsumkwe Senior Secondary School Head of Department (HOD) Barbara Uatanaua told Nampa yesterday.
Tsumkwe is situated over 260 kilometres south-east of Grootfontein, and is considered a core habitation area for San-speaking Namibians in the region.
Uatanaua said the majority of the San learners who failed Grade 10 and 12 two years ago are busy upgrading their symbols through the Namibian College of Open Learning (Namcol).
She could not give the specific number of San learners who had failed the two grades.
She, however, said her school had only three San learners in Grade 12 last year, and they also did not do so well.
Uatanaua noted that it worries her to see San learners in Tsumkwe schools still being automatically promoted to higher grades, despite not passing the previous grades.
That weakens them even more as they are unable to read, write or speak English.
She also placed the blamed for the situation on some primary schools in the constituency, which feed the Tsumkwe Senior Secondary School with Grade 8 learners who do not meet certain standards.
Uatanaua said the San learners at her school come from the Mangetti Primary School, the Tsumkwe Primary School, the Omatako Primary School and the M’kata Primary School.
This year, the school has a total of 310 learners from Grades 8 to 12.
Only seven learners are currently writing their Grade 12 final examinations at the school.
The HOD said the seven Grade 12 learners are Rukwangali, Oshiwambo and OtjiHerero-speaking.
The school has 10 learners in Grade 11, and four Grade 10 classes – with the majority of the 87 Grade 10 learners being repeaters aged under 16.
Uatanaua, however, feels positive that many of the San-speaking learners in Grade 10 this year will proceed to Grade 11.
“We have worked hard. We had debating competitions with learners from the Gam Combined School.
We also had extra holiday and weekend classes for our Grade 10 and Grade 12 learners,” she enthused.
She further noted that the majority of the learners from her school have to upgrade their symbols with Namcol before proceeding to any institution of higher learning.
The Tsumkwe Senior Secondary School is one of the oldest schools in the constituency with 15 teachers.
Meanwhile, when contacted for comment on the issue of automatic promotion, the Public Relations Officer in the Ministry of Education, Johanna Absalom said her ministry does not encourage or apply “automatic promotion”.
“What our policy provides guidance on is the promotion of learners.
There is no such term as automatic promotion in our policy,” she said in an e-mail on Monday.
According to her, the promotion of a learner means the learner is allowed to continue to the next year of study, despite not having met the minimum required standards.
She said the practice is being implemented at lower-primary phase from Grade 1 to Grade 4, upper-primary from Grade 5 to Grade 7, and junior-secondary level in Grade 8 and Grade 9.
Absalom said in cases whereby a learner is promoted to the next grade due to age, teachers should give special attention to such a learner in order for him or her achieve their needed competencies. – Nampa