CONGRESS of Democrats (CoD) secretary general Tsudao Gurirab has questioned the quality of higher education in Namibia following the ‘sex for marks’ scandal reported in the media yesterday.
In a press statement, Gurirab said that recent media reports relating to malpractices in the assessment and marking of exam papers is a cause for grave concern.It was reported in a local daily newspaper last week that students at both the University of Namibia (Unam) and the Polytechnic of Namibia pay as little as N$150 to lecturers and other students to complete coursework assignments.Yesterday it was claimed in an article in a local daily that certain lecturers at Unam demanded sexual favours from students in return for passing grades in assignments and exams.’Allegations of both outsiders and lecturers writing course essays for students or passing students in return of sexual favours puts serious question marks on the quality of our higher education,’ Gurirab’s statement reads.He further stated that sexual relations between school pupils and teachers are already widespread throughout the Namibian education system, and ‘it is perhaps no surprise that similar allegations are now being made about student/teacher relationships at our institutions of higher learning.’Gurirab said students who ‘sell sex for marks’ cannot be proud of their qualifications and neither can lecturers, who stoop as low as taking a N$150 bribe to pass underachieving students, have any professional pride.The CoD secretary general said the primary responsibility ‘for stopping this rot’ rests with the authorities of these institutions.Gurirab said parents entrust teachers and lecturers with the responsibility to prepare their children for life by imparting skills and knowledge, and ‘teachers/lecturers who fail our learners and students, therefore, fail us all as a nation’.Gurirab called for a combined effort between students, their representative bodies and law enforcement agencies to ‘weed out these pests from our education system,’ adding that the guilty parties need to be named, shamed and punished.The practice is reportedly so widespread that it is called ‘sexually transmitted marks’.
