The Ministry of Education, Arts and Culture says the 28 726 pupils who did not qualify to progress to Grade 12 or university in 2024 have the option of pursuing technical and vocational education and training (TVET).
However, both public and private vocational training institutions in the country can only accommodate a combined 5000 trainees per intake.
Out of the 40 757 pupils who wrote the final Namibia Senior Secondary Certificate Ordinary (NSSCO) level exams last year, 12 031, or 29.5%, qualified for advanced subsidiary (AS) level.
The director of national examinations and assessment, Clementine Garises, on Wednesday said these results constitute a 0.2% increase.
“Any result above 0.2% is, in my view, an improvement. When we talk about over 80 000 candidates at ordinary level, the full term was 40 757, and there is significant improvement.
‘EMBRACE TVET’
“We need to embrace it . . . for the past few years after Covid-19 we’ve been having so many problems, and the results were disastrous.”
She said many of the 28 726 pupils who did not qualify for AS level took TVET subjects.
“They also scored A, B and C gradings, but TVET subjects are not offered at AS level.
Therefore, they don’t progress to AS, and they are not included in the number of the qualifiers to AS,” Garises said.
She said development studies, for example, is not offered at AS level.
“We have quite a number of subjects that are not offered at AS level,” she said.
Universities such as the Namibia University of Science and Technology require 25 points in five subjects, including a minimum of an E symbol for English at NSSCO level.
The International University of Management’s admission requirement for undergraduate students is 20 points in their best five subjects, with a D symbol in English at NSSCO or AS level.
University of Namibia spokesperson Simon Namesho yesterday confirmed that the university does not accept Grade 11 pupils with AS level subjects.
CAPACITY
The chairperson of the Association of Technical and Vocational Education and Training Institutions in Namibia, Regina Ambambi, yesterday said public TVET institutions have a capacity of close to 2 000 and private institutions about 3 000.
Ambambi referred The Namibian to the National Training Authority, which did not respond to questions sent at the time of going to print.
The Namibian Institute of Mining and Technology takes in 2 000 new students annually.
This was confirmed by its executive director, Ralph Bussel, yesterday.
Garises said the country needs to take pride in the 11 percentage point increase in the number of pupils qualifying to progress to Grade 12 or universities.
“We need to also give credit where it is due. When we started with the reform, advanced subsidiary level was never offered in Namibia,” she said.
Garises said it took teachers time to adapt to a new syllabus.
“My assumption is that the teachers got to grips now with the content of their syllabus, and then we also had old question papers from which the candidates could see what type of questions to expect at this level,” she said.
Teachers are now “maturing into teaching AS level, assessing AS level and even learning and answering questions at AS level, compared to four years ago”, the director said.
To better their results, pupils can enrol at the Namibian College of Open Learning, which accommodated over 25 000 students last year, including 326 TVET students.
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