The Namibian Education Time Bomb

I WONDER if I am alone in regretting the rather negative choice of headline in this paper last Friday ‘Grade 12 results no cause for joy’.

In fact the grade 11 and 12 results are rather good compared with most countries in the region. What a pity also that the opportunity was missed to congratulate the teachers responsible, often working in quite strenuous conditions. But they will not be too worried; they are long used the view of the public that children do well because they are clever whereas when they do badly it is the teachers fault. But just let me say to them all; great job, keep it up.The problem with the system is not grade 11 and 12 but with the numbers that don’t get there. Consider this:This year, 55 000 new Namibians will be born. If the system does not change this is what will happen to them.•1 000 will not enter primary education•Another 12 000 will fail to complete primary education•Another 9 000 will fail to complete junior secondary education•Another 15 000 will be unable to enter senior secondary educationThat makes a total of 37 000, or two thirds of our 55 000, discarded by the educational system and bound for the economic scrap heap.This is not only grossly inhumane; it is a ticking time bomb. We ignore these at our peril. All the more so in that it is all avoidable even within current resource limitations.A unique and defining feature of Namibian education is the astonishing fact that one child in every five is a repeater. It is astonishing for three reasons; the first being that it does not happen anywhere else. The second is that it was a procedure used in colonial times as a control instrument and it really should not have made it past Independence. And the third is that as a way of improving performance it simply does not work. In fact all the evidence there is suggests that it has the opposite effect. There are far better, and far more humane, ways of helping learners with difficulties as the 20% or so of schools where repetition is minimal of non-existent know well. Even if it were shown that repetition was effective, the country simply cannot afford it.There are about 550 000 learners in grades 1-10. 110 000 of these are repeaters. They occupy the time of 3600 teachers and the space of over 300 schools. This is five times what is needed to allow all last years’ grade 10 ‘failures’ to go on to grades 11 and 12. It is almost enough to allow all our 55 000 newborns of 2011 to enjoy 12 years of education which is their birthright.Each year we hear of thousands of learners ‘failing’ grade 10. They don’t ‘fail’. There are simply no places for them in grade 11 and so the Ministry uses the results as a means of limiting entry. There is no standard required at grade 10 for progression to grade 11 because the grade 12 examination has been designed from the outset to cater for all abilities.So I would like to encourage Dr Iyambo to take the bull by the horns and make the following three simple announcements:As from January 2012: 1. No learner will be permitted the luxury of repeating a year he or she has already taken.2. All schools must be required to do what the best already do; provide special programmes for addressing any learning difficulties that their children may be experiencing.3. All learners completing grade 10 will be allowed to enter grade 11His ministerial colleagues in Uganda and Tanzania have both done this in the last few years and it is working. It gave their civil servants a few headaches but civil servants are paid to have headaches. They did it because their neighbours include Kenya and Rwanda and so they are not unfamiliar with ticking time bombs.