School system ‘needs to be revamped for better results’

THE education system requires a major overhaul so that Grade 10 and 12 pupils can achieve better examination results, a member of the opposition said in the National Assembly on Tuesday.

Elma Dienda of the Congress of Democrats (CoD) tabled a motion on the exam results, which prevented thousands of young people from either getting jobs or studying at a college or university. Quality primary education should be the top priority so children would learn to read and write properly, Dienda said.’The automatic progress of school children from Grade 1 to 9 without repeating a year is an unhealthy situation. If a child has not mastered the work in Grade 1, it will not do so in Grade 2 when automatically promoted right until Grade 9. Thus it is not surprising we have a high failure rate in Grade 10,’ Dienda said.’What are we trying to achieve? Do we compromise quality – giving the wrong impression to donors at the expense of reality? Teachers often complain that pupils are ‘forced’ through the school system although their marks are not good enough,’ she added. Tertiary institutions should have remedial and multi-grade teaching in their curricula to prepare future teachers for their task. The bulk of the huge annual budgetary allocation for education is used for teachers’ salaries, which leaves very little for textbooks, the CoD Member of Parliament noted. ‘Textbooks only exist for each child for English, maths and science. What about the other subjects?’ Dienda asked. She told the House that compulsory compensatory teaching existed in the education system to help those children with learning backlogs and who had difficulty mastering their work. ‘With that in place, why is the failure rate still so high?’ she asked. Dienda recommended that school feeding schemes at primary schools should be implemented at secondary schools too. Another factor, according to her, is that grandparents look after children and often cannot help them with their homework.’Parents are often elsewhere looking for jobs or they have just disappeared. Parents should be 100 per cent involved in their children’s schooling,’ Dienda added. She also criticised media houses for not having dedicated education desks reporting on educational issues. ‘The Namibian has a youth desk, which mainly covers letters from children on youth matters and not necessarily on education. They do not have specialised reporters assigned specially to the education desk. The media should take an aggressive stance in supporting education and creating public awareness for development,’ she said.Dienda proposed that children who are more suited for vocational careers should be taught the relevant subjects from a young age, parallel to their classmates who receive more academically geared tuition.’We must look at the root causes in the ensuing debate and this information could be used by the Education Ministry to hold a national debate on the matter,’ Dienda said.