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Esinathy Sibanda, Chronicle Reporter
PRIMARY and Secondary Education Minister Professor Paul Mavima has said the ministry has come up with a number of interventions for schools recording a zero percent pass rate at Grade 7.

The Minister said four schools in Matabeleland North registered a zero percent pass rate in the 2018 Grade Seven examinations, a situation which is worrying.

“I am aware of the specific schools in the province that registered zero percent pass rate at Grade 7, but it is not just Matabeleland North, but the rest of this country,” he said.

“One of the measures is the recruitment of teachers, and we are targeting those schools that did not have sufficient numbers of teachers to teach optimally.

“We also have two programmes that we run within the ministry, one is called Performance Lag Address Programme (PLAP) and the other one is called Zimbabwe Early Learning Assessment (ZELA), which is meant to make sure that there is sufficient ability to read and understand at schools.”

Prof Mavima said the Ministry had statistics of the poorly performing schools and would ensure that their education systems are upgraded.

“On resources, our policy has been to look at the most disadvantaged schools and those are the schools we target first. We are targeting about 3 500 primary schools with school improvement grants,” he said.

“We look at disadvantaged schools and those are the schools that we allocate resources.

“Even the distribution of teaching and learning materials that is currently going on has targeted the same schools.”

Each school with zero percent pass rate will be dealt with as a specific case, said the Minister, in order to come up with interventions for that specific school.

The 2018 Grade 7 national pass rate is 52,08 percent which is an increase on the 2017 national pass rate of 44,73 percent.

The pass rate increased by 7,35 percent.

— @esinathy_essira