22, 734 candidates failed the General Certificate of Education Examinations in 2019 showing an increase in the failure rate to 13 percent from 6 percent last year.
Of the 127, 456 candidates that sat for the exams, 96, 019 candidates obtained the GCE Certificates of which 31, 682 were male and 64,337 were female.
Announcing the results in Parliament yesterday, General Education Minister David Mabumba said the best pass rates were in practical subjects at 68.3 percent followed by Literature and Languages at 47.07 percent and Social Sciences and Business studies category at 33.83 percent.
Mr Mabumba told the House that Natural Sciences category was the least with pass rates of 14.9 percentage points.
Meanwhile, Mr Mabumba said 23,969 candidates that sat for 2019 Grade 9 external examinations have failed showing a failure rate of 30 percent.
He said 55,721 out of the 79, 690 candidates that sat for the 2019 grade 9 external examinations have passed representing an increase of 8 percentage points from 2018
Mr. Mabumba said out of the 23, 969 that failed 10, 658 were males representing a 44.4 percent while 13,311 were females representing 55.5 percent respectively.
They are never ready. Too much reliance on leakage
How can they pass if they are starving. Children are hungry.
Plus country is being subbotaged by PF’s Zesco.
Poverty and the effect of power cuts. You can not study when hungry and worse enough when you have no electricity.
Everything is deteriorating under PF. All the money that is supposed to be spent on the critical sectors of our economy is being pocketed by PF.
In health-care the minister Chilufya has been implicated in scandle after scandle. Drugs have gone missing at medical stores. Hospitals have no drugs or vital supplies. Health workers are not paid their money on time even thought it amounts to peanuts.
In agriculture FISP is given to PF cadres who know zero about agriculture but they sell the inputs to others.
In education, our children have no text books or even desks to sit on. They come from hungry homes and cant focus on school. Our girls end up dropping out of school and getting married because thats the only way they will survive.
Meantime dununa reverse is busy buying private jets…
What are GCE Exams. The London GCE?
Am lost.
Which grade 9 exams for 2019. I thought the grade nine GEC have not even wrote the exams yet.can someone say something.
There are a lot of reasons for a failure rate. One cardinal reason, is loadshedding. How do you expect students to pass under such economical malaise. The time students want to study power is not there. Some subjects require power for one to study.Subjects like computer science. This load shedding, if not taken seriously, will derail a lot of progress in this nation. Students of nowadays, literally, depend on electricity for everything. On top of being lazy, they have no any imitative. They want everything on the silver plate.
Pretty sad. I suppose, lessened study time – due to rampant load-shedding, has contributed.
Loadshedding, social media abuse and drug abuse are probably the top causes of this high failure rate. Seeing such poor performances in business related subjects and sciences is a clear indication of how impractical our GCE curriculum is.
Have the grade 9s already written their exams? I thought they’re writing this month
It’s a clear reflection of the prevailing soical-economic situation – with the accompanying lack of any political will in investing in the cardinal human development areas of education and health.
Truth be told Load-shedding should not be used as an escape way to why people failed the GCE exams.
If it was so why did others make it? Are they not experiencing the same load-shedding as those who failed?
People are now just becoming lazy and it is so sad that even those who should stand to help the victims are busy misleading them even the more.! Bane let’s call a spade a spade Loadshedding will never make anybody fail an exam. It’s not like we have total darkness through out the day that people can’t study during day time!!!
Laziness is the cause to why the students failed massively and no two ways about it…
Bana ba mu malaiti like broilers! too much social media.Most of these kids don’t even google for knowledge but will be more on social media,movies on phone and downloading hip hop.When it is exams they will be looking for and distributing leakage on whatsapp.Perhaps this is a silver lining -those who passed did so genuinely and those failures mostly deserved it -check out the subjects passed.
What do you expect? GCE is dominated by utukopo
A man with out G.C.E. certificates should be treated like a dog.Peter Carlos Hinds.
For those that say that the queen is old.To hell with her.Should hang.Peter Carlos Hinds,
That’s what you get when you have people in power who don’t see the how future a 100years from now… All they see is a full belly n dripping pockets…thats PF for you and Zambia for you. Even Rwanda despite the wars and being landlocked it has developed faster than a peaceful 55 year old country like ours… Shame on you people who think backwards and don’t question your leaders…
When you question them that’s were you see someone being arrested for saying the truth and questioning the leaders
@weknowyou & The Voice. Thank you for your sensible comments.
There are those of us who walked long distances to and from school, only had cassava and groundnuts for food during the day and had no electricity in our homes. We still passed our exams and have made it in life. So can you honestly come on social media and blame the government for poor academic performances these children are exhibiting? Some times it’s good to set your political inclinations aside and critically analyse issues.
It is a sad news to everyone. Things have to be critically analyzed to find out why having such a failure rate. For real loadshading mostly it has contributed to this high failure rate. Also some people don’t study, they just want to depend on leakages which is not suppose to be done, that’s a wrong method of trying to pass an exam. God blessed everyone with a brain, use it to study, use it to gain the knowledge and by doing that it shows we appreciate God for giving us the brain. Others study but they use wrong methods of study, know yourself, know your weaknesses and you will know which method best suit you. Also seek help before it’s too late. Study in advance, last minute is always dangerous. The only way of passing an exam is to study adequately.
Let’s not even blame load shedding for their failure, call a spade a spade. Load shedding maybe is only 5% the reason but the biggest reason is the laziness of the students due to over reliance on leakages. Kudos to the ministry of education for ensuring zero leakages this time, if this continues Zambia will have a sound and reliable education system that will well equip education wise future generations. Close any loopholes left let them pass using their own brain and genuine study. Those who prepare well for exams never get disappointed but it is those who party after party after party and then rely on leakages who get disappointed. Good and real education is part of the future of this country let’s have zero tolerance to leakages and sex for grades.
A BAD CARPENTER ALWAYS BLAME IS TOOLS. IF YOU LOOK VERY EXTRA CAREFUL AT THE HEMLINE OF THE RESULTS CONCERN THE GCE. YOU WONT EVEN HAVE THE COURAGE TO SAY BAD WORD OVER BA ZESCO. Some provinces in Zambia they do not have Electricity but the passing rate are very impressive than Lusaka, Copperbelt and Central Province etc.
Students of nowadays are becoming lazy, leakage dependants and too much time on Community Functions. It’s not like we have total darkness through out the day that people can’t study during day time!!!
They have just failed due to laziness, and poor time keeping. So they have to Change their attitude towards education.
Now you have to mentor your mind sets and stop blaming the Government over simple and silly issues in our Country. ………………
Instead of you blaming the Go’tv for every stupid things that are going on in this country, why can’t you just show the responsibility as a citizen to help the people who are in need… Not just bragging about no sensible things.. road shading road shading! Is it the government’s fault that we’ve not been experiencing heavy rains?? Don’t like condemning other people… There’s is a reason why you are not a president, it’s because you are greedy and you can’t manage to run the country… Let those are chosen to rule us in good and bad times……
Load shedding and bad economy