Mandatory promotions, truancy by teachers, others responsible for poor results at higher grades

Mungwi District Commissioner Muma Musonda has said the reintroduction of cut off points at grade seven will improve academic performance in the higher grades.

Musonda observed that while Mungwi district was the best at grade 12 level in Northern Province, results at grade nine were not something to write home about.

He said in an interview on Sunday that he had taken upon himself to find out the reason for the falling academic standards in the district as he started touring schools to talk to various stakeholders in the education sector.

“I am going around various zones in the company of the District Board Secretary and district standards officer to check what was really causing poor results at grade nine while getting better results at grade 12,” Musonda said.

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He said preliminary investigations indicate that absenteeism among teachers was rampant, the wide teacher-pupil ratio despite recruiting more staff was still a challenge because of lack of balancing and that the mandatory progression to grade eight was among the major causes.

Musonda said the decision by the Ministry of Education to forgo mandatory progression to grade eight would improve results at grade nine.

He expected teachers to be committed to their work adding that his administration ensured that those who abscond teaching in preference to beer drinking were punished accordingly.

“We cannot continue paying people for doing nothing but absconding classes and going around drinking beer,” Musonda said.

He said the Government introduced free education and recruited an unprecedented number of teaching staff to ensure that everyone gets quality education but that teachers were not responding by putting in their best.

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