Education in crisis
Staff Writer | Friday February 26, 2016 18:00
According to the results, the best pass rate in this year’s results is 51.29 percent which was attained by St Joseph’s College followed by Mater Spei (35.22 percent); Naledi Senior (33.80 percent); Selebi-Phikwe (32.88 percent); GSS (31.31 percent); Ledumang Senior (30.31 percent) ; Lotsane (29.90 percent); Moshupa Senior (27.31 percent); Masunga (27.22 percent).
Francistown Senior only managed to attain 26.88 percent followed by Swaneng with 27.22 percent and Mogoditshane (26.29 percent) while Moeding got 25.44 percent followed by Letlhakane 25.12 percent and Molefi 24.53 percent with Madiba attaining 24.08 percent, Tutume 23.74 percent and Kgari Sechele 23.24 percent followed by Maun with 23.04 percent and Matshekge 22.83 percent.
The results show that there has not been any significant improvement from the last year results.
Experts observe that the results point to the same old problems, most of which still remain unresolved.
They opine that we seem to be entertaining mediocrity as most of these students are the same students who proceeded with lower grades from junior schools to senior schools. This attitude they say, will also proceed to tertiary and eventually to the job market. The government has tried to address some challenges but it seems the problems remain elusive. According to BEC, a total of 38,796 candidates wrote the 2015 examinations showing an increase in candidature of 3.8% compared to the 2014 cohort of 37,384. There were 16,483 (42.5%) male candidates and 22,313 (57.5%) female candidates sitting for the 2015 BGCSE Examination.
There were 25,640 (66.1%) candidates from government and government-aided schools compared to 25,186 (66.4%) in 2014 and 13,156 (33.9%) private candidates compared to 12,198 (32.6%) in 2014.
The private candidates category included 6,569 (16.9%) Back-to-School candidates, 3,591 (9.3%) individual private candidates and 2,996 (7.7%) candidates from private schools.
“Since the BGCSE is a subject-based qualification with no aggregation, the measure used to gauge the performance of candidates is the proportion of candidates who were awarded Grade C or better in five syllabi.
This year 6,291 (24.5%) candidates from government and government-aided schools were awarded Grade C or better in five syllabi compared to 5,843 (23.2%) in 2014. This shows a noticeable increase of 1.3%,” reads a communique from BEC.
Disastrous results at a glance
As is now the norm, performance in the 2015 PSLE results was pathetic, only increasing by 0.45%, from 14.2% in 2014 to 14.65% in 2015 for Grade A, while the percentage of candidates who obtained grade B increased by 0.49%, from 17.35 in 2014 to 17.84% in 2015. Candidates at Grade C decreased slightly by 0.36% from 37.61% in 2014 to 37.25% in 2015.
It is important to note here that many of these C candidates were marginal and therefore, cannot be differentiated a great deal from those in the D category. As further indicated, the proportion of candidates at grade D are reflected as having slightly decreased by 2.08% from 25.35% (2014) to 23.27% (2015), while Grade E had an increase of 1.59% from 5.22% (2014) to 6.81% in (2015).
The JC results as also reported by BEC are just as disastrous, with the overall results of 2015 almost the same as the 2014 across various grades. The summary shows that about 33.4% of the candidates have been awarded grade C or better compared to 34.6% in 2014.
This summary of results further shows that the proportions of candidates who obtained lower grades D to U have increased from 2012 to 2015. As in previous years, what is devastating and scandalous about the 2015 JC results is that out of a total of 41,938 candidates who sat for JC examinations, only 14,014 passed while an overwhelming 27,924 either obtained grade D or worse.
The trend in PSLE and JC is no different for BGCSE results in 2015, of all the grades awarded, only 27.27 % are C or better. Further revealed is a slight increase in performance for grades C or better of about 1.52% from the previous year.