Uncle Harvest on 2020 MALAWI SCHOOL CERTIFICATE RESULTS

The Ministry of Education and the Malawi National Examinations Board(MANEB), recently released the 2020 Malawi School Certificate Examinations results for the examinations that were re-written in January 2021 falling massive leakages.

The pass rate is at just above 41 percent.

This, to say the least, it is very disheartened.

A case were over 58 percent of learners have failed the examinations: Learners from Community Day Secondary Schools being the greatest victims.

In some cases you have schools that had no learner passing.

In others were you have one or two passing.

This 41 percent, which is the quantitative pass rate is made worse when you look at the qualitative aspects of the results.

The message from these results is very clear, “We collectively have failed the nation.”

We cannot courageously allow MBC like we did in the past to play the song “Lero masewera akutera".

( Look at the results of your childish behaviour!)

The learners cannot take the full blame for these results. A national self-reflection exercise is needed. What has gone wrong with the education system?

All of us know that partly the students were disturbed by the cancellation of the examinations falling massive leakages of some examination papers and the closing of schools due to Covid19 preventive measures.

It is important to note that until today nobody took responsibility for that leakages.

The question, however: "Where did the Malawi that used to administer national examinations without police officers and the military being involved? Where is the Malawi where over 80 percent of learners used to pass national examinations? What went wrong?

So much needs to happen to repair, rehabilitate, and rejuvenate the education system. Otherwise, this nation is on its death bed.

While we hope that those who failed would seek to repeat, it is also a known fact that the majority of them will not.

In addition, they do not have any chance to re-take the examinations in 2021 as MANEB already registered candidates for this year's examination that are scheduled for the end of the academic year.

Furtherstill, schools do not have sufficient spaces to accommodate such a huge number of learners, that is if all of them wanted to repeat.

This is no time for finding scapegoats. As a people we have a tendency of rushing to ask the question" Who is to blame?"

Once found we chop the head of that petson and continue with business as usual only to get similar results. For once, let us asked the questions,"What went wrong? Why did it happen this way? How did it happen?"

In this way we might get to the root of the problem of the poor quality of our education system and come up with lasting solutions.

This is a sad moment for the nation. To borrow a term from the past, it is time we became conscious again of the fact that, “Youth are the spearhead of the Nation”.

The question that begs an answer then becomes,"Are were sharpening the spear or we are making it's edges even more blunt?"