EDITORIAL: Revise exam results for facts, not political ends
Minister for Education and Vocational Training, Dr Shukuru Kawambwa
What you need to know:
It was great sadness for parents, some of whom had paid through the nose to give their children the “best education money can offer”, for the disastrous grades weren’t the monopoly of the usually understaffed and underequipped ward schools.
Needless to say, the 2012 Form 4 national examination results, announced in February this year, were an embarrassment to anyone with a modicum of affection for Tanzania. Having 240,903 out of the 397,126 – or 60-plus per cent - of the candidates getting a Division Zero score is most damning.
It was great sadness for parents, some of whom had paid through the nose to give their children the “best education money can offer”, for the disastrous grades weren’t the monopoly of the usually understaffed and underequipped ward schools.
Students in many high cost private schools suffered too. Definitely, something was seriously wrong somewhere either with the candidates, their teachers, the exam papers, the examiners or the grading system.
Naturally there have been, since the “fateful February”, calls for the big men and women connected with education delivery and testing to resign, maybe forgetting that, that sort of culture doesn’t exist in Tanzania.
Cynics said they weren’t surprised by the poor results – they had seen it coming, for, they said, our Form 4 candidates have been performing steadily poorly since 2009 (26.46 Zero grade); 2010 (50 per cent) and 2011 (46.41 per cent).
The ambitious government plan to have virtually everybody enrolled for O-Level hasn’t helped matters, for surveys have unearthed thousands of fresh Form One students who can neither read nor write!
In our universities, lecturers complain of the intellectual poverty of the youth admitted for undergraduate studies, while employers express displeasure at the quality of “today’s graduates”. All this calls for a serious reappraisal of our education system from top to bottom.
Meanwhile, let’s have the revision of the 2012 exam results as ordered by the Cabinet, but let it be scientific and honest so that the fresh results will reflect the genuine fruit of each candidate’s effort, not something tailored to suit political expedience.
