The education system is plagued by a lot of problems that make it impossible for teachers to deliver.

This was said by National African Students Association President Paulus Vihemba.

NASA President Paulus Vihemba stated that the association took time to evaluate the Namibian National Senior Secondary Certificate Ordinary Level and Advanced Subsidiary Level results.

He attributed the failure of learners to a lack of commitment from the stakeholders, such as school management, automatic promotion, learners, and the Ministry of Education, Art, and Culture.

"The failure of the Cabinet to allocate adequate funding for basic education and the failure by the Ministry to mobilize additional funds to implement free education led to many crises that negatively affected learning and teaching, such as the lack of adequate learning infrastructures, the delay in paying out UPE and USE grants, and a shortage of teaching and learning materials in our public schools, hence creating several problems, among them the copy paper crisis, a shortage of textbooks, and other relevant resources. The ministry did not recruit adequate teachers for understaffed schools as required by the teacher-to-student ratio policy, which suggests 30 learners per secondary school teacher. Because of the delay in appointing new teachers, classes now have as many as 45 students.

The president of NASA says many teachers do not understand the new curriculum, as it was just introduced and there was no proper training given to teachers.

The student association calls upon all stakeholders in the education sector to come together and reform the Namibian education system as a matter of urgency.

"We are calling on the government to prioritize the funding of education by increasing the basic education budget from N$14.1 billion to at least N$20 billion to effectively run education. This would mean that teaching and learning materials will be made available to allow effective teaching and learning, and we are recommending that management posts such as the principal and head of a department be appointed on a five-year contract just like higher learning institutions, and reconstruction should only be done based on the satisfaction of the set performance indicator."

NASA further recommends that the Ministry of Trade and Industrialization and law enforcement agencies strictly regulate the trading hours of alcohol outlets.

Moreover, they recommend that the ministry reduce NAMCOL registration fees per subject.

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Photo Credits
NBC Digital News

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Author
Elizabeth Mwengo