The Zambia National Union of Teachers (ZNUT) has expressed concern at the poor performance by Grade 12’s in 2014.
ZNUT Director for Research Christopher Yalukanda told ZANIS in a telephone interview in Lusaka today that the poor performance of the 2014 Grade 12’s was as a result of the Examination Council of Zambia (ECZ) decision to ban extra tuitions in schools.
Mr Yakulanda said extra tuitions provided a platform for pupils to have reinforcement of lessons undertaken in class.
Mr Yalukanda further stated that before the ban many pupils especially those in boarding schools would remain behind to get extra lessons apart from those acquired in school as a results improving their performance.
He also explained that the performance of pupils was affected by the moving forward of examinations by the examining body as a result most schools had not completed the entire syllabus.
He said the examination time table was changed in a manner that was unusual unlike the ones in the past years which enabled the pupils to do their practical’s before the theory.
Mr Yalukanga also stated that teachers where demotivated by the government decision to introduce a wage freeze and that affected their levels of commitment and effectiveness to duty.
Education, Science , Vocational Training and Early Education Minister Michael Kaingu however announced yesterday that out of a total of 119,862 candidates who sat for grade 12 examinations only 66,971 got school certificates representing a 14.1 percentage increase over the 2013 examinations.
Dr Kaingu said the figure represents a 55.8 percent pass rate.
Nonsense, there is ample time for teachers to teach during normal class but for your own selfish reasons you want extra tuition. This country going nowhere especially with a joker like Mr. Kaingu as education minister and these charlatans of teachers !!
Anyway my daughter managed six points straight (1’s in all 9 subjects)
Ministry of Education, Science, Vocational Training and Early Education.
Lets appoint and try an Asian Zambian or a naturalized citizen at the helm, Zambians heading this ministry are proving failures!
No, tuition s were harmful and destroying poor people who did not afford to pay for their children and the poor people were affected
TEACHERS OUGHT TO BE SERIOUS WITH THERE LESSONS ON TIME PLAN INSTEAD OF LEISURING IN STAFFROOMS, THOUGH SHOULDN ‘T PUT ENTIRELY THE BLAME ON THEM.I WAS ONCE A PUPIL, AND MY SELF SACRIFICIAL HARD WORK PAID OFF.
Teaching is a challenging job.You are tasked to give results even when the students you teach are not at passing standards.Banning extra tuitions was a negative and oppressive move by ecz considering the fact that Government slapped a wage free on civil servants,extra tuitions helped both students in earning positive and teachers in earning an extra income.Extra tuitions are everywhere around the world,USA,UK,South Africa you name it.So Government should sit down and consult before implementing some stupid policies like the use of vernacular as a medium of instruction at primary level,the combining of History,Geography and Civics to form social studies at Junior level.Government has lowered the standards of education in Zambia and more will be needed to uplift the standards.
Mike get your facts straight dear. At my community college, extra tutoring is offered to students who are willing to be helped and the tutors are paid by the school. Not a situation where you pay school fees and you got to pay for extra lessons again ummmmm?
Teaching is a challenging job.You are tasked to give results even when the students you teach are not at passing standards.Banning extra tuitions was a negative and oppressive move by ecz considering the fact that Government slapped a wage freeze on civil servants,extra tuitions helped both students in earning positive results and teachers in earning an extra income.Extra tuitions are everywhere around the world,USA,UK,South Africa you name it.So Government should sit down and consult before implementing some stupid policies like the use of vernacular as a medium of instruction at primary level,the combining of History,Geography and Civics to form social studies at Junior level.Government has lowered the standards of education in Zambia and more will be needed to uplift the standards.
The lack of teacher motivation and the new curriculum are to blame for the poor result
Not the teacher
If these results are said to be poor, then the waste is to come next especially with the introduction of a curriculum which had no EXPERIMENTAL VERSION in order to assess its effectiveness. Worse still, has the Govt delivered all the required materials for the new curriculum? The simple answer is NOOOOO! Do you expect the teachers to perform miracles by teaching what will be in the new textbooks?
I have oversimplification of some of these issues. Surely there are many contributing and reinforcing factors to this scenario. I thought tuitions are extra and should ordinarily be perceived as such. Does it mean that the only thing that makes pupils to pass is tuitions? Before issuing such statements it’s better to conduct a thorough research
most teachers dont qualify to teach grade 12s. they did pddl with no grade 12 certificates themselves becausevthe govt forced them to do so. check those who are studying with university of zambia, open university kwame kuruma most of them have no grade 12 certificates
I don’t think the said researcher is telling the all truth. It is common knowledge that for a long time, if not longer, most pupils and some teachers had depended so much on examination malpractices like exam paper leakages. Is it coincidental that last year theses leakages were almost eliminated and today there is such bumper failing? Lest be real as teacher and accept failure. i have never offered tuition or extra lesson but my pupils pass and fail. All i do is to check were we both pupils and I went wrong and not using the issue of wage freeze as the cause. Oky, why didn’t all pupils pass at the time we were awarded almost 100% salary increment as never before? When we fail lets all be accountable and not give excuses that.
God bless both learners and teachers of Zambia and let…
Hw much a thee teachers want to b geting we a o in the same range, as civil servants, wat do they teach in order for them to geting billions every month as wage bill in the exp of poor results. We don’t want inflation u get a lot of money jst minimise the borrowing
Simple fact is that there were no leakages. Dr Phiri did a wonderful job
I personally feel there is need to re-visit and change our curriculum, it has out lived its usefulness. There is no way in this time and age our children can still do special papers 1 and 2 which we as their fathers did years ago. What did this add to our lives after school then and what can it add to our children’s life after school today? There is no way an institution such as ECZ still does not provide materials to students online or come up with a system where exams are taken online so that there are no other reasons to explain failure. As for teachers,i feel the reasons that the syllabus was not completed and that extra lessons were abolished leave much to be desired.
ECZ must be commended they did their homework, no leakages, we have now true and credible results,unlike having superb results and yet your IQ is that of a grade six pupil in another country
Is it not last year when we saw pupils demostrating because there was no leakage? Dr Phiri did a good job and today we have credible results. Blame it on the pupils who heavly depend on leakages to pass.
I do not believe that they banned tuition. Tuition is legal in some countries like China, UAE, Kuwait e.t.c
Without leakages, this has shown the real colours and calibre of our students some of whom just waited for leakages that did not materialise.
Why cant we just accept that this is because there was no leakage? I like these results. They are credible.
Early Grade 12 exams was a bad decision.Grade 12s only have effectively onl two terms!Teachers lamenting on tuition ban in schools are not been sincere. What are they going to teach in tuitions that they don’t teach in regular time, apart from making extra income. Blaming the poor grades on wage freeze is a fallacy!So pupils failed because of wage freeze, where is their professionalism?Reminds me of nurses warming their ‘back sides’ as patients dye in the wards!If they can’t serve, RESIGN!
Indeed, these are credible results. We saw it in Kitwe pupils running amok because the exam papers they had bought were fake. One boy openly lamented that he was going to fail because he literary thought he was going to have the leaked papers. He even said his future was ruined because the papers he had were fake.
This statement is defensive.As we say at work ‘meant to save one’s butt.Do a through root cause analysis starting with practical statistics and find the dominating factor which can quantify and qualify as the probable cause.Do not issue predetermined statements meant to embrass some individual or organization. You are educators. Society depends on you.Be the torch bearer of honest!
Most Teachers of today are lezy for time planing as a result they fail to the syllabus at all time.
Attributing poor grade 12 results to absence of leakages is myopic. Leakages are an illegal aspects of exams and cannot be variables to be considered when analysis examination results.
Several factors contributed to low pass rates year; teacher motivation, home and school environment, none completion of syllabus, changes in exam calendar, abolition of tuition in public schools etc. Tuitions, paid or frees cannot be underrated. In secondary schools contact hours have been shortened to accommodate APU. Tuitions reinforce what has been taught. Mind you learner’s understanding rates differ. In any case education in Zambia is liberalized and parents are at liberty to pay or not for the education of their kids.
The results reflect the teachers’ attitude towards work. The profession of teaching is no longer the way it was during the colonial period and the Kaunda era. Teaching has become a means of economic survival. People just go into it to survive and not to ensure that the pupils they teach succeed. Today’s teachers are there for the salary only. There is no commitment towards their work. The heads of schools do not supervise their teachers and the so-called E.S.O’s don’t do work as it should be done because when they visit schools they don’t check the pupils note books to find out how far they have gone in the syllabus and the level at which the pupils are taught. Instead, in most cases such visits end at the school head’s office.How are pupils expected to pass when teachers do as they…