'Shady' deal to improve pass rate

A decision by the Rehoboth High School (RHS) management to make 29 grade 10 learners complete the grade over two years has been condemned by the education ministry.
The permanent secretary of the Ministry of Education, Arts and Culture, Sanet Steenkamp, said this is unacceptable and an “unscrupulous” deal.
Although she was not aware of the agreement, Steenkamp emphasised that no school management has the right to prolong a learner’s school career unless the learner is harmful to himself or others.
According to the school’s life science teacher, Martina Jarman, the decision was made during a meeting attended by the school management and the regional education director, Mzingisi Gqwede, in January this year.
The motivation behind the decision, she said, was to give the learners that were promoted to grade 10 without merit a better chance at passing that grade.
“The decision was made because we have so many learners that fail at the end of the year. In reality they are still supposed to be in grade 9, because they did not pass it. Even during the first semester of this year, the learners’ results were very poor, so even if they write now they may not pass,” Jarman explained.
According to her the learners’ parents signed an agreement in January that allows the school to only register the children for the grade 10 exam next year.
However, some of the parents changed their minds after it was discovered that one of the 29 learners, whose mother serves on the school board, was registered for exams this year while the remainder were not registered.
Jarman confirmed this but denied that it was because the child’s mother serves on the school board. She said three other learners whose parents do not serve on the board were also “mistakenly” registered.
According to her it was a “technical error” and these learners cannot be deregistered.
“The learner whose mother serves on the board is one of the parents who strongly felt their children are not ready and should only write the exams next year. What will happen now is that these four learners will simply not write this year,” she said.
One of the disgruntled parents, Sara Diergaardt, said they were coerced into signing the agreement.
Diergaardt is worried that prolonging grade 10 will jeopardise the future of the learners, who are already aged between 18 and 20.
“They told us that if we do not sign the form our children would be chased from the school. This thing now means the children must just go to the street or go and work in people’s kitchens,” said Diergaardt.
Gqwede said he was not aware of the decision, but after making enquiries he said the matter was under investigation.
“From what can gather telephonically is that there was a parent and school board meeting earlier this year to discuss the poor grade 10 results at RHS. They decided to hold back those learners who did not pass grade 9 but were transferred to grade 10 as per the ministerial policy,” said Gqwede.
He told Namibian Sun that he had called a meeting for today where the issue would be resolved.
Diergaardt, however, said parents were never part of the meeting where the decision was made and were only called in to the school to sign the agreement.


Unlawful


Steenkamp said if every teacher made sure that the children had the basic competencies required, there would have been no need for such an arrangement.
“There is no rule that a school can do this. We will have to contact the director. The school will have to clearly explain why they made this decision,” she emphasised.
“It is clear that the management of the school did not oversee the operations of the school. If the teachers already knew by then that the learners were struggling they should have put in effort to see to it that the children must be assisted during extra lessons or tutoring,” said Steenkamp.
JEMIMA BEUKES