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“Sometimes they would tell us that the Government is not paying them enough money. As a result, they would teach for a few minutes and instruct us to go and read for ourselves.”

The pupil wrote seven subjects last year and got a chain of Ds. She attended a boarding school in Matabeleland South.

The mediocre performance by pupils who sat for O-level examinations last year has sparked an outcry from citizens across the country who think that the pass rate was too low. They are asking why this is so and what can be done to achieve a better pass rate.

Statistics from Zimsec show that only 31 767 pupils attained passes in five subjects or more out of 172 698 who sat for the public examinations. This translates to an 18,4 percent pass rate, down from last year’s 19,5 percent. But an analysis of previous pass rates shows that the 2012 one is the third best in a decade.

O-Level Entries and pass rates analysis:

Year Wrote 5++ Passed 5++National %

SubjectsSubjets with C+Pass Rate

2000264 70536 65913.88

2001 272 12538 07713.99

2002274 80937 79613.75

2003275 73735 78313.0

2004 271 08429 03610.2

2005251 75530 77812.2

2006223 96831 24614.2

2007260 43025 6689.85

2008 87 20120 63014.44

2009142 84016 85919.33

2010164 34027 08916.5

2011161 65331 52919.50

2012172 69831 76718.4

Some blame the Government for not prioritising the education sector while academics say the country is yet to fully recover from the massive brain drain of teachers with temporary teachers failing to properly fit into the shoes of qualified teachers.

Most schools are scoring poor results because they are ill-equipped, said respected educationist, Professor Phineas Makhurane.

“Infrastructure is poor and there is a shortage of books. You might find out that a single book is used               by the whole class,” said Prof Makhurane, the founding vice-chancellor of the National University of Science and Technology (Nust).

He said there is separation of powers between Zimsec and the Ministry of Education, Sport, Arts, and Culture which is bad. Zimsec sets examinations based on the curriculum which would have been laid down by the Curriculum Development Unit which is under the Ministry of Education, Sport, Arts and Culture.

“Zimsec should be involved in setting the curriculum. Zimsec assumes that pupils have done experiments, it assumes that teachers are there in schools and it also assumes schools have good infrastructure.

“They mark exams based on the curriculum and  they cannot reduce their standards because schools are poorly equipped,” he said.

He however, was quick to point out that Zimsec is not responsible for these poor results.

Zimta chief executive officer, Mr Sifiso Ndlovu said: “This poor pass rate is a small deviation from the    norm. It is a tolerable deviation.”

There is need for special assessment of which schools are performing badly, he said, adding: “Sometimes the nature of schools contribute to poor performance. Some school have double seating, the afternoon session and the morning session.

“In such a scenario the teacher-to-child contact is short, it is about four hours as compared to boarding schools which is eight hours,” he said.

There are a number of measures that have been taken to improve the standards of education in the country but they have failed to produce expected results. For example, Unicef is providing textbooks and other necessities under the Education Transition Fund, but results on the ground are not remarkable.

“The pass rate for 2012 is 18,4 percent for the 268 854 children who wrote. So while these results are very serious they must be seen in their proper context. Enormous damage has been done to our education system in the last decade,” said the Minister of Education, Sport, Arts and Culture, David Coltart.

“For example we lost 20 000 teachers in 2007 and 2008 and the damage done by that alone to a generation of children cannot be easily undone. While we have made significant strides in stabilising our education system much remains to be done.

“Relevant to this is the fact that we concentrated on the primary sector first — for example we got textbooks out to the primary sector in 2011. Textbooks for secondary schools were only distributed at the end of 2011 and we are still in the process of completing that exercise.

“So many of the children who wrote O-levels last year at best only had textbooks in Form Four. Anyone who expects children to do well without textbooks simply doesn’t understand the basics of a good education system.”

Mr Ndlovu said the shortage of teachers is another cause of poor results. He said temporary teachers do not have the required skills to improve the pass rate.

“The country needs about 25 000 teachers, this shows that about a million pupils are in need of teachers. There is need of a proper budget to replace qualified teachers with temporary teachers,” said Mr Ndlovu.

Asked why Zimta tends to concentrate more on advocating for better salaries for teachers than working towards improving pupils results he said:

“We are a professional organisation. We balance between trade unionism and professional issues. We are socially responsible and we take pupils’ needs first. We managed to donate 10 000 books to our learners last year.”

The Grade 7 results for last year are also as poor as the O-level ones. In 2009, 272 397 children wrote Grade 7 exams and the pass rate was 20,11 percent. In 2012, 292 375 children wrote the examinations and the pass rate is 31,5 percent which is an improvement.  But others say this slight increase is still unconvincing.

The Advanced Level pass rate has been impressive; perhaps because of the bottle-neck system that is in place which ensures that the more academically gifted progress to that grade.

In 2008, 33 985 children wrote A-levels with a pass rate of 67,21 percent. Last year 36 678 children wrote the public tests attaining a pass rate of 82,09 percent.

Minister Coltart attributed the miserable performance to lack of Government support.

The damage done to the education sector by the chaos of the last decade (and under funding for two decades), he said, is incalculable but the country is seeing the effects through these low pass rates.

There is a need for collective work from parents and schools, said Dr Mabhena Mpofu, a lecturer in teacher education at Nust who worked as a headmaster for 20 years. He said another cause of the failure is poor supervision from school heads and other senior officials.

“The quality of supervision from the regional, district offices and the headmaster is poor. Supervision should not be done for the purpose of fulfilling the script. School heads should be exemplary, if they spend most of the day out of school, teachers will also do the same. Absenteeism will be rife at school.

“There must be a continuous development among teachers. Teachers should be equipped with relevant skills that suit their pupils. Many workshops should be conducted within the province, district and clusters. Look at the weakness that teachers have and develop them. Increasing the number of visits will not improve the results because teachers will be prepared.  Sometimes teachers will be under pressure so they might not perform well,” he said

Another  lecturer at Nust, Dr George Shava, said the curriculum is unfair to pupils. He said the curriculum does not take into consideration efforts taken by pupils and teachers through their learning and teaching years respectively.

“The curriculum should be revised so that course mark can be part of the final mark. It is unfair for pupils to be assessed for two hours (during examinations). More so, this curriculum is overloaded. Twelve subjects are too many for pupils. They should combine some of these subjects to make them a single subject so that pupils can write at least five subjects,” he said.