By Benadetta C. Mia
Education analysts have described the 2020 MSCE results outcome as an indication of dwindling standards in the country’s education system.This comes as the nation has only achieved a 41 percent pass-rate, with only two schools-Likuni Boys and Maranatha Academy producing one learner each with the highest score of 6 points.
Speaking to reporters, Limbani Nsapato, an education analyst said it is unfortunate that for over 30 years now many learners have been failing examination with pass-rate hovering around 50 percent.“The performances we have had over the past 30 years more than 50 percent of candidates have been failing exams because from 1992 up to now, the average pass-rate has been 38 percent which is way below 50 percent. So that tells us that we have poor standards of education.” said Nsapato
According to Nsapato, lack of investments in the sector and other factors such as the Covid-19 pandemic, cancellation of exams as well as political instability in the past two years have also affected performance of learners.“These developments have affected performance of our learners, but all in all we should say that our education system is in a crisis.” said Nsapato
He has since suggested the need for heavy investment in the education system to ensure that there are well trained teachers as well that there are all necessary materials to deliver quality education.”If you can see, the best performing schools are those belonging to private or religious institutions and those that have strong foundation in terms of quality of teaching and learning materials, quality of infrastructures but also quality teachers. So this is something we need to ensure that our system contains.” explained Nsapato.
