Staff writer
Progressive Teachers Union of Zimbabwe president ,Takavafira Zhou said the country has not made major strives to depart from ‘colonial ‘ education method as pupils are condemned to poverty upon failure to get 5 O Levels.
In an interview with The Blast while giving a post moterm analysis of 2024 A Level and O Level Zimsec results, Zhou said there was a need to ensure that pupils who fail at O Level get life serving skills.
“The ‘O’ level Zimsec results reflect that of the 199 258 pupils who wrote 5 or more subjects 33.19% managed to get 5 subjects. This is an increase of 3.78% from 2023 results. At ‘A’ the 2024 pass rate was 94.58% as compared to 94.60% in 2023,”said Zhou.
“It is clear that the ‘O’ level pass rate is a pale shadow of the 66.6 % in 1980, 57% in 1981, 59.2% in 1982, 54.6% in 1983. However, it compares favourable against the 10% of 2007.
“What is clear is that Zimbabwe has not made a major departure from colonial education and condemns the majority of Zimbabwean pupils to poverty and misery merely because of failure to get 5 subjects at ‘O’ level. There is no major departure from colonial education as there are no concerted efforts to develop and test life serving skills that can ensure that pupils can function beyond the classroom learning,”he added.
Zhou said although the Heritage based curriculum was put in place into schools, there was no clear chance that it will assist students with survival skills upon completion of education.
“As much as there was the Updated Curriculum from 2017 to 2024 and now the Heritage Based Curriculum, without injecting clear cut benchmarks of developing skills and capital, it remains puzzling how this will usher in a major departure from traditional colonial education, he said.
” At any rate the performance even in the so-called 5 ‘O’ levels is not based on actual potential but a percentage input of the assumed normal curve by students. The best student with 30% can even get an A pass at ‘O’ level as was the case with the History syllabus 2166 in 1999,” he added.
Giving an analysis of A Level results, Zhou said:
“As much as the ‘A’ level performance has remained constant, it is important to note that there is no corresponding benefit to the nation emanating from that high pass rate.
“The majority of such students fail to do anything meaningful other than going to University and join the lumpen proletariat thereafter. Students have noted this as evidenced by a drop of students from 34 437 in 2023 to 33 585 in 2024. There is certainly, a greater need for funding training of life serving skills, and creation of some funding to capacitate graduates to venture into employment creation as Secondary level and after the tertiary education. It is also critical to create industrial hubs in schools and higher and tertiary institutions if Zimbabwe is to make inroads in life serving skills and employment creation.
“As of now, with an economy on its knees, pupils and students do not see the purpose of education as more often than not, those who have not gone to school seem to be rewarded better than those who spend many years in schools. It is a wake up call to the government in terms of serious planning informed by educational taxonomy and sustainable development.”
The PTUZ boss implored government to improve the working conditions and salaries of teachers.
“All the same teachers need to be commended for their herculean work under difficult conditions. As Ptuz, we condemn the so many who continue to condemn teachers for doing so much with so little. We also appeal to the government to pay teachers well so that they can continue to be dynamic, innovative, motivated and engineer life serving skills among the youths, who in essence are the best asset that any nation has,”he said.