Andrew Kathindi
The Ministry of Education has no plans to relax the English promotion requirement for critical grades.
This comes amid calls for the current school curriculum to be revised, which currently has English as promotional language, particularly for learners in rural areas who are believed to be held back by the demand to attain a 40 percent pass mark for promotion.
According to the latest promotion policy of 2015, a learner in Grades 5-7 should be promoted to the next grade if they have obtained an E-grade (40 percent) or better in 5 out of 6 promotional subjects, and an E-grade or better in English, other language and Mathematics.
A Grade 8 or 9 learner should be promoted to the next grade once they have gained an E-grade or better in 7 out of the 9 promotional subjects and an E-grade or better in English. Grade 10 and 11 learners need an E-grade or better in 5 out of the 6 subjects and an E grade in English.
Speaking to Windhoek Observer, Acting Director for Programmes Quality Assurance (PQA) in the Education Ministry, Ayesha Wentworth said that the language policy of the ministry is such that leaners must be taught in their mother-tongue from pre-primary until grade 3 and then take English as a subject.
She explained that the reasoning behind this is because when children are strong in their mother tongue, it’s easier for them to acquire a second language.
“This is still an on-going process with the Ministry in terms of strengthening that mother tongue instruction, because it also depends on the number of learners. You cannot only have two children speaking Otjiherero in school and then you have to have a teacher for Otjiherero, it’s not feasible. But I cannot really say that there’s a move towards relaxing the English requirements, but maybe just strengthening the implementation and the teaching and learning around those elements,” Wentworth told Windhoek Observer.
According to the National Institute for Educational Development (NIED)’s recommendation in 2011, in raising the passing requirements for Mathematics and English, especially English, the Ministry should consider schools in rural areas that use mother tongue instruction for the first three years of schooling and the impact such a requirement may have on the learners’ promotion.
Meanwhile the Ministry of Education says promotion of learners next year due to lost time as a result of Covid-19 will only happen as a last resort.
“I think ultimately that would be the last resort for the Ministry because we want our children to gain the necessary skills in order to progress to the next grade and what we have done at this point is we’ve rationalised the curriculum,” said Wentworth.
Teachers Union of Namibia (TUN) Secretary General, Kavihuha said that aside from grades 12, 11, 9 and 7, all other grades should be deferred to the next grade and catch up on the portions of their curriculum that they missed next year when it is safer to do so in order to have a manageable number at schools for the remainder of the year.
“When all the learners return in July, it won’t help anything. If we observe social distancing, what help will it do if a learner only gets to see their teacher once a week. Reopening all grades, we are not in support of it. The situation now is that some learners are already left behind. It is confusing. The Mariental learners now miss 14 days compared to other learners in the same region and that situation will continue, so there’s no uniformity in coverage of the curriculum,” he said.
Students teachers Union (SUN) is also against all grades returning to face-to-face teaching, amidst COVID-19 fears.
