Education, Sport and Culture Minister David Coltart has deplored the fact that nearly 82% of students failed their November 2012 ‘O’ level exams but argues that this was an improvement on 2009, when only 14% passed.
Coltart a senator from the smaller MDC faction was a guest on the BBC’s Focus on Africa programme. He admitted that the results were sobering.
“I’m afraid that this was inevitable. There’s been so much chaos in Zimbabwe’s education system in the last decade that it was inevitable that children’s education would be affected in this way,” he said.
“If you don’t have teachers, if you don’t have textbooks, ultimately literacy and numeracy proficiency drops, and that is eventually reflected in examination results.”
Senator Coltart said the 82% failure rate was an improvement on previous years. “In February 2009, the pass rate was 14.4%. It’s now 18.4%. We are improving it but there’s still a lot of work to be done,” he said.
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