Scrap Grade 7 exams, insists NAQEZ

Fri, 23 Feb 2018 09:30:10 +0000

By MOSES SINJWALA

NATION Action for Quality Education in Zambia (NAQEZ) has insisted that Government should abolish Grade 7 examinations, despite government refusal to do so.

NAQEZ Executive Director Aaron Chanda said it was meaningless to continue having grade 7 examinations, as learners proceeded to grade 8 despite having performed poorly.

“We insist that the current form of the Grade 7 examination is a huge cost to the Examination Council of Zambia as it had no value to the learner nor the country,” he said.

Speaking in an interview with Daily Nation Mr Chanda said the current Grade 7 exams are none failing exams and that they were purely just for academic purposes in the current form, and that the Ministry of General Education needs to come in the open and purely clarify its relevance.

He was reacting to the ministry’s position that Grade 7 examinations cannot be abolished because they played a critical role in the basic education sector of the country.

But Mr Chanda questioned the value the exams were adding to the sector when all pupils that wrote the exam still proceeded to Grade 8 despite failing.

However, Zambia National Union of Teachers general secretary Newman Bubala has supported government’s decision not to abolish Grade 7 exams, stating that at present, there was limited amount of space for
everyone go in to Grade 8.

He also added that it was not possible that all pupils who write grade 7 exams proceeded to grade 8, with the limited number of teachers and infrastructure in the country.

“We have a teacher deficit and the current primary and secondary school policy that the government re-introduced in 2011 cannot hold the policy that NAQEZ was pushing for,” he said.