mbulelo smpofu
THE 2024 Grade 7 results, released on Friday, show a 49,01 percent pass rate, up from 45,57 percent last year.
A total of 387 429 kids wrote their final tests in September, according to the Zimbabwe School Examinations Council, 199 939 of whom were girls, 187 490 boys.
In 2020, there were 327 599 candidates who achieved a pass rate of 37,11 percent.
The pass rate for all subjects was this year above 50 percent and two of them — Shona and Physical Education and Arts — was above 80 percent. Girls, as they have often done in recent years, outcompeted boys, scoring 53,68 percent versus 43,99 percent.
We are glad that the number of children writing their Grade 7 public examinations is rising and that pass rate is progressively improving.
However, we note that while there is broad progress, there is stagnation, if not regression, in some places. Three schools in Gwanda District, Matabeleland South recorded zero pass rate, just as many as in Bulilima. No kid at four schools in Insiza passed.
There are scores of more schools across the country that recorded zero pass rate which is sad.
It cannot be accurate to say that all of the kids at the zero-pass-rate schools are not gifted academically. There will obviously be some who are good but their performance is impacted by external factors, most of which are known.
It is almost always high staff turnover, lack of textbooks and other learning materials, absence of requisite infrastructure and long distances to schools which makes it impossible for pupils to walk to and from school daily.
It concerns us more that most of the non-performing schools are in rural areas.
We don’t want a kid’s background, the location of his or her home, not their academic ability, to determine their prospects. We don’t want to profile our innocent ones this way.
Next month the 2024 Advanced Level results would be out. A month or two later the Ordinary Level results would be out as well.
The rural-urban dichotomy is set to show again.
The 2024 Grade 7 results must challenge all of us to think about the future of that 12-year-old at Zindele, Mbembesi, Riverblock and Hompane who fails his or her final tests, not because they are truant or ungifted, but because they don’t have enough textbooks or because they don’t have a teacher to guide them through.
Yes, the pass rate is improving in general terms, 12 percent up in four years. Yes, the Government is investing so much in education with the primary and secondary education sector getting the highest vote, 21 percent, in the proposed 2025 budget. Around 1 194 schools were built nationwide between 2017 and 2021. Many more must have been built since then.
By May, the Government had employed 4 600 more teachers and planned to recruit 2 400 more by this month.
That’s impressive, but our progress must be measured on the basis of how our slowest is moving ahead, how the kids at the remotest primary school in the country is faring academically.
We are doing a lot so we achieve the best that we desire for all our school children, but it is vital that we hasten the pace.
