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Mkhululi Ncube, Chronicle Reporter

BULAWAYO Province was the best performing nationally once again in the 2019 Grade Seven public examinations and the Ministry of Primary and Secondary Education has hailed the province for hard work.

Last year the province also had the best results nationally for Grade Seven.

 This was said by the Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Primary and Secondary Education Mrs Tumisang Thabela in an interview with Chronicle in Bulawayo yesterday during the ministry`s strategic planning review workshop.

“Bulawayo was our best province in terms of Grade Seven results for this year and we want to congratulate the acting Provincial Education Director Mrs Olicah Kaira and her team,” said Mrs Thabela.

She said despite the January violent protests which affected learning, the province still managed to post good results.

“Yes there were problems at the beginning of the year, the not so consistent attendance by some of our teachers and learners in Bulawayo as one of the most affected provinces by the January disturbances. But I think the results just show how resilient our education system is. It can take a knock but it cannot fall down and Bulawayo has proved that for us,” said Mrs Thabela.

While she was not in a position to give a detailed analysis and statistics of the Grade Seven results nationally, she said the national pass rate dropped by about five percent.

“Generally we did not perform as well as last year. We have fallen as a nation by about five percent and we want to check and find out what is it that we have not done well. But some of the stoppages and disruptions could be accounting for this drop in our pass rate,” she said.

Mrs Thabela urged provinces that did not perform well to put more effort in their work.

“But even the lowest performing provinces we want to encourage them with the current Grade Six learners and the rest of the schools let’s concentrate on early learning in the first four years to make sure that our children are ready to learn because if we can get them right, get them literate by end of Grade Two, definitely they can reach the milestones that we want as they go up the ladder,” she added.

She called for more effort in reducing the schools deficit and hailed parents for helping in school construction. 

“Parents, individuals, churches and other stakeholders are joining Government because we have a big shortage of schools at around 2 000 schools and we invite stakeholders to come and join hands.  We are getting a lot of private public partnerships but I salute the parents for their efforts,” she said.

Although Mrs Kaira’s office is yet to give an analysis of how local schools performed, Roman Catholic-run St Thomas Aquinas Primary School was the best performing in the province with a 100 percent pass rate in all subjects last year when Bulawayo also came first nationally.

The head of the school, Mr Cuthbert Chiromo, said their success was due to team work. 

“I subscribe our success to team work, the teachers are very committed and they have done very well and the support we get from the board of governors, the parents and the input  by the pupils themselves because you can take a horse to the river but you cannot force it to drink,” said Mr Chiromo.-@themkhust_ncube