More than 17 000 full-time learners fail Grade 10

It will be a bleak festive season for the families of more than 17 000 learners who failed to garner the 23 points needed to advance to Grade 11. Namibia’s Junior Secondary Certificate results have remained consistently poor in recent years, with thousands of full-time students either ending up on the streets, or enrolling with the Namibian College of Open Learning (Namcol), while a handful are allowed to repeat full-time at Namibian schools. About 2 500 of the more than 17 000 students who failed this year will be allowed to repeat Grade 10 at schools next year. The results were announced by education minister Katrina Hanse-Himarwa at a press conference yesterday. This year, 37 441 full-time Grade 10 candidates registered for the national examinations. Hanse-Himarwa said the education ministry had kept the minimum requirements for promotion to 23 points and an F symbol in English since the year 2000. Out of 37 441 candidates who registered for the Grade 10 examination this year, 20 318, or 54.3%, qualified for admission to Grade 11. While there has been slight improvement in the number of students who passed compared to last year, almost a thousand more learners failed this year. Last year, 35 592 candidates registered for the Grade 10 examinations and 19 264 (54.1%) qualified for admission to Grade 11. The number of learners advancing to Grade 11 might increase, as part-time students often accumulate enough points to advance to Grade 11. “The number of candidates qualifying for admission to Grade 11 in 2016 might increase to approximately 23 318 because part-time candidates build up subject credits over a couple of years and normally meet the admission requirement to Grade 11 only after a number of years,” Hanse-Himarwa said. 25% fail Accounting Examinations statistics show that about 25% of learners who wrote the Accounting examination were ungraded. Hanse-Himarwa said her ministry had noticed a persistent high percentage of ungraded candidates in Accounting and Keyboard and Word Processing over the past years. “Regional offices are urged to put more efforts into these subjects,” she said. Hanse-Himarwa also said that the 2015 Grade 10 results showed a slight decrease in the performance of candidates at grades B, C and F with a slight improvement at grades A, D and G. The candidates have performed the same as in 2014 at Grade E. The graded entries have also slightly increased from 6.6% in 2014 to 6.7% in 2015. “This is an indicator of slightly poorer performance of the 2015 Grade 10 candidates, and this is supported by slight increase of 0.2% of the ungraded entries from 2.7% in 2014 to 2.9% in 2015,” she said. In summary the 2015 Grade 10 results are the same as the 2014 results in terms of performance. Hanse-Himarwa said there are various ways how candidates who failed can be assisted. They are encouraged to register with part-time centres such as NAMCOL. Alternatively, they are encouraged to enrol at vocational training centres through the Namibia Training Authority. Part-timers’ performance improves A total of 11 534 part-time candidates were registered for the 2015 national examinations. Of these, 11 383 studied through the Namibian College of Open Learning (NAMCOL) while 151 part-time candidates were enrolled at distance-education institutions registered with the Ministry of Education. The minister said the results showed that the part-time candidates performed slightly better during the 2015 JSC examinations than last year. There was a slight improvement in performance at grades C to G with a stable performance at Grade A and a slightly poorer performance at Grade B. There has been no increase in the number of ungraded entries this year. Grade 12 Higher Level The Grade 12 examination is taken at two levels - NSSC Higher Level and Ordinary Level. Hanse-Himarwa said the performance of the NSSC Higher Level candidates was poorer than last year. A total of 13 172 of the 61 159 Grade 12 candidates - full-time and part-time combined – wrote one or more NSSC Higher Level exams this year. Hanse-Himarwa said the percentage of candidates obtaining grade 1, 2, 3 and 4 decreased when compared to 2014. “It should also be noted that the graded entries decreased from 96.0% in 2014 to 95.4% in 2015; which is supported by an increase in the ungraded entries from 4.0% in 2014 to 4.5% in 2015,” she said. STAFF REPORTER