Education revamp project on track

THE first 12 months of a 15-year Government education-reform plan have shown good progress and the project is on track, an official in the Education Ministry says.

Justin Ellis, who is the Ministry’s manager for the N$11 billion Education and Training Sector Improvement Plan (ETSIP), said the first N$100 million was spent to get the programme rolling. “We are busy providing 40 schools and training colleges with information and communication technology (ICT) and the necessary backup, together with training,” Ellis told delegates to a review conference on Wednesday.”The challenges we experience are to achieve more efficient use of allocated resources, avoid overlapping of reform activities and improve teacher skills in maths and English.”We will increase the teacher-learner ratio and provide training to teachers so that they are able to cope with more learners in the classrooms,” Ellis added.The Ministry was also examining the possibility of reducing the number of subjects at junior secondary level from nine to six.Over the next few months, the ETSIP task group would concentrate on developing performance targets for each of the approximately 1 600 State schools.Education Minister Nangolo Mbumba said as part of ETSIP, Government started pre-school education this year and could increase the supply of textbooks to junior secondary schools.”The ETSIP programme is sound, feasible and bankable,” Mbumba said.A recent World Bank report on education in Namibia found that it was not meeting the needs of the country’s economy and was “ineffective”.It also found that the country’s lack of early-childhood development resulted in 80 per cent of children entering Grade 1 without the required level of learning readiness, while 60 per cent of primary school teachers and 30 per cent of secondary school teachers were unqualified.Of those teachers who were qualified, a large proportion lacked mastery of their teaching subjects, English proficiency, reading skills, curriculum interpretation and setting student tests.The report said curricula were overloaded with too many subjects and lacked clear standards; there was a shortage of schoolbooks, and 21 per cent of all schools had no permanent classrooms.The World Bank study also found that just a third of children enrolled in Grade 1 eventually completed senior secondary school in Grade 12.So far N$8,4 billion has been made available by the Government, the European Union, Sweden, and the Netherlands.Government has also borrowed US$30 million (approximately N$200 million) from the World Bank to kick-start the education plan.”We are busy providing 40 schools and training colleges with information and communication technology (ICT) and the necessary backup, together with training,” Ellis told delegates to a review conference on Wednesday.”The challenges we experience are to achieve more efficient use of allocated resources, avoid overlapping of reform activities and improve teacher skills in maths and English.”We will increase the teacher-learner ratio and provide training to teachers so that they are able to cope with more learners in the classrooms,” Ellis added.The Ministry was also examining the possibility of reducing the number of subjects at junior secondary level from nine to six.Over the next few months, the ETSIP task group would concentrate on developing performance targets for each of the approximately 1 600 State schools.Education Minister Nangolo Mbumba said as part of ETSIP, Government started pre-school education this year and could increase the supply of textbooks to junior secondary schools.”The ETSIP programme is sound, feasible and bankable,” Mbumba said.A recent World Bank report on education in Namibia found that it was not meeting the needs of the country’s economy and was “ineffective”.It also found that the country’s lack of early-childhood development resulted in 80 per cent of children entering Grade 1 without the required level of learning readiness, while 60 per cent of primary school teachers and 30 per cent of secondary school teachers were unqualified.Of those teachers who were qualified, a large proportion lacked mastery of their teaching subjects, English proficiency, reading skills, curriculum interpretation and setting student tests.The report said curricula were overloaded with too many subjects and lacked clear standards; there was a shortage of schoolbooks, and 21 per cent of all schools had no permanent classrooms.The World Bank study also found that just a third of children enrolled in Grade 1 eventually completed senior secondary school in Grade 12.So far N$8,4 billion has been made available by the Government, the European Union, Sweden, and the Netherlands.Government has also borrowed US$30 million (approximately N$200 million) from the World Bank to kick-start the education plan.