Zambia National Education Coalition (ZANEC) has urged the Ministry of General Education to invest in the Vocational and Skills career path to ensure that no pupils are declared to have failed examinations after 12 years of being in school.

Reacting to the recently released Grade 12 results, ZANEC Executive Director George Hamusunga told Money FM news that investing in the vocational career path, recruiting enough teachers annually and increasing the financing of education inputs and operational costs can help more candidates to obtain full Grade 12 certificates.
“The 2019 grade 12 results as announced by the Minister of General education, has shown improvement compared to previous years. Overall, much still needs to be done in order for more candidates to obtain  full  Grade 12 certificates and these  include investing the vocational career path, recruiting  enough teachers annually  and increasing the financing of education inputs and operational costs,” Mr. Hamusunga stated.

Mr. Hamusunga said the coalition’s view is that all pupils must graduate with a certificate in either vocational skills or academic career path.
“Our strong view is that all pupils must graduate with a certificate in either vocational skills or academic career path. Therefore, we would like to urge the Ministry of General Education to invest in the Vocational and Skills career path to ensure that no pupils are declared to have failed their examinations after 12 years of being school” he said.

Mr. Hamusunga further said although the 2019 grade 12 examination results have shown improvement compared to the previous year, the performance by candidates who obtained certificates shows a very marginal increase in pass rates from 63.44% in 2018 to 65.32% in 2019.
Meanwhile, Mr. Hamusunga stated that the high failure rate in mathematics and sciences can be attributed to the fact that they are among subjects that have a high pupil teacher ratio and also the lack of teacher recruitment in 2019.

He called on the Ministry of General Education to recruit more teachers in STEM subjects as part of the expansion of the secondary school subsector to complement the ongoing infrastructure expansion Programme. 

“The Coalition notes with concern that candidates performed least in natural  sciences and mathematics in a country  where Science,  Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) subjects are currently being promoted.”
“We therefore call upon the Ministry of General Education to recruit more teachers in STEM subjects as part of the expansion of the secondary school subsector to complement the ongoing infrastructure expansion Programme,” Mr. Hamusunga said.