Martin Endjala
The Landless People’s Movement (LPM) Leader and Chief Change Campaigner, Bernadus Swartbooi, is proposing that all the 33 000 learners who set for the final exams last year be accorded a chance to rewrite the exams.
This is to give them a fair chance if the argument by the education ministry is centered around Covid-19. Swartbooi argues that the outcome of last year’s results is not a Covid-19 induced phenomena but rather a repetition of doing the same thing over and over. Thus urging the ministry to start doing things differently and effectively to benefit all learners at all grass roots and not only those who are privilege.
The LPM leader was speaking yesterday at a press briefing in Windhoek. Pointing out that tolerable interventions must be made to accord these learners a special chance due to the nature of the circumstances in which they had to write examinations.
Swartbooi stresses that the number is way too huge to just ignore or let these learners go into the classification of not being able to achieve their dreams. Thus advising that if government wants to see future generations running this country, then such incidents must be avoided at all costs and start empowering young people.
He further opines that he was dismayed to learn of only 19 schools from thousand of schools in the country which offers technical subjects like wood work and home economy. Hence he is in support of a performance agreement suggested by the education ministry to be signed by teachers and unions to evaluate teachers’ performances.
Furthermore, the LPM Leader’s sentiment are centered around an underperforming teacher who is allowed to go on teaching for many years while producing undesirable results. Adding that the introduction of the performance evaluation is an outlook future strategy that will help to better steer the education sector into an effective and productive vehicle, geared towards world class academicians.
He also states that the high rate of failure in the country could become a long forgotten matter if teachers are held accountable for not producing. However, he is concerned about the rejection not to sign the performance agreement by various unions, opining that their way of advocacy seems to be economically driven, by ensuring that teachers get well paid, a strategy he supports very much.
But he rather wants to see unions stop the blame game of pushing the blame to government and start owning up and be accountable, since the issues of education affects everyone and requires collective common interests inputs rather than just complaining about this and that, Swartbooi stresses.
Meanwhile, the LPM Leader was pleased to learn of a individual tracking system by the ministry until point of exit.This comes after allegations of about 40 000 learners from primary dropping out due to various reasons.
He is therefore more concerned about what the ministry does to get them back. Swartbooi accentuates that this must be put in place to ensure that every tracked individual is accounted for and their where about made known to the ministry, accompanied by further assistance by the ministry based on how special the matter is.
