Patience Makwele
More Namibian boys than girls are repeating grades and leaving school early, while women have made up the majority of tertiary students and graduates for more than three decades, new research has found.
The findings, presented by University of Namibia (UNAM) education researcher Dr Faustina Kashinauua Neshila at the launch of the DEN Impact Foundation in Windhoek on Tuesday, point to a persistent gender disparity in educational achievement from primary school through tertiary education.
According to the research, the average promotion rate for female learners was 78.4%, compared with 75.1% for male learners.
Girls also recorded a lower repetition rate of 14.7%, compared with 18.5% among boys, while the school-leaving rate stood at 4.9% for girls and 6.3% for boys.
“In short, for about 12 years, more girls than boys have been promoted from grade to grade, more boys than girls repeated grades, and more boys than girls left school early,” Neshila said.
The research found that the disparity continues into tertiary education, where women have consistently accounted for the majority of students.
At UNAM, women represented more than 60% of enrolments in most academic years between 1992 and 2023, according to the research.
The study also found a significant gender imbalance at the Namibia College of Open Learning (NAMCOL), where females accounted for about 90% of enrolments compared with 10% for males.
Neshila said the figures suggested that women were more likely than men to return to education to improve their qualifications.
The pattern was also evident in graduation figures, with women accounting for approximately 69% of UNAM graduates at the beginning of the period examined and about 68% towards the end.
“The pattern has been ongoing now for three decades, that a girl child is outperforming and over-graduating the boy child as well,” Neshila said.
The research also draws on Ministry of Education statistics covering 2012 to 2021, which showed that more Namibian boys than girls dropped out of primary and secondary school.
Neshila said the reasons included academic failure, disciplinary problems, boys feeling too old for their grades, entering employment and parental demands for them to leave school.
She cautioned, however, that parental demands were not uniform across all regions.
The research showed that boys had lower survival and promotion rates, higher failure rates and were more likely to leave school early.
At tertiary level, female students consistently outnumbered males across public and private institutions for more than three decades.
“This persistent outcome of Namibian male learners’ educational underachievement in school and tertiary institutions has prevailed almost under the radar,” Neshila said.
She called for the educational challenges facing boys and men to be incorporated into national education programming and treated as a national priority.
Neshila stressed that the response should be based on equity rather than competition between boys and girls, arguing that targeted interventions were necessary to give boys greater opportunities to improve their educational outcomes.
“We are not promoting equality, but speaking of equity in education, to ensure that the Namibian boy child also gets an opportunity to overachieve in education,” she said.
First Gentleman Lt Gen (Rtd) Epaphras Denga Ndaitwah said the findings confirmed concerns raised during community engagements conducted by his office.
“The statistics do not lie,” Ndaitwah said, arguing that the country needed to respond to evidence rather than emotion.
He said supporting boys should not come at the expense of gains made in advancing girls and women.
“Boys and girls are mutually inclusive,” he said, describing interventions targeting boys as a balancing measure rather than a competition between the sexes.
Prime Minister Dr Elijah Tjitunga Ngurare, who officially launched the Den Impact Foundation, said the research made it clear that more needed to be done to address boys’ educational challenges.
He said the problem extended beyond education to unemployment, mental health and wider social development.
Ngurare called for targeted dialogue, mentorship and support programmes for boys and young men, while emphasising that such interventions should complement existing programmes supporting girls.
The findings come as the DEN Impact Foundation begins a four-year strategic programme focused on youth development, with particular emphasis on boys and young men through education, sports, agriculture and vocational training.
