There are very few things that Zimbabweans generally pride themselves of and even fewer where there is almost unanimous consensus. Among this short list is the good quality of the education system that has been in place since 1980.
Zenzo Moyo
There is a worldwide perception, correct in my opinion, that Zimbabweans are highly literate people and can easily adapt to any environment that requires intellectual engagement. In 2014, The African Economist rated Zimbabwe’s literacy levels at 90,7%, the highest in Africa. In the same year, the World Economic Forum’s Information Technology Report (under the skills sub-category) ranked Zimbabwe’s science and maths in the top five in Africa, together with Tunisia, Cote D’Ivoire, Ghana and Morocco. These are just two of the many testaments to the quality of Zimbabwe’s education system, a system that so far has defied all the negatives expected of an economy engaged in reverse gear.
Recently there have been suggestions by Caiphas Nziramasanga, to radically overhaul the Zimbabwean education curriculum, even more than the curriculum, the entire education system.
He is reported to have encouraged scholars and the general public to join in the debate so the nation can come up with a common position. Chief among the recommendations that he proposed when he addressed at Bindura University recently (and as also captured in the 1999 Nziramasanga Commission Report) is that Grade Seven and Ordinary level examinations should be discarded. He gave two reasons for his recommendation. Firstly, he argues that the curriculum has become redundant, ineffective and alien to the country. Secondly, he posits that these two national examinations are becoming too expensive for the government. According to him, abandoning these exams and adopting continuous assessment will save Zimbabwe a lot of money.
I agree with his call for a national debate on every policy issue that the country adopts. But this is where our agreement ends. I proffer that it is very absurd, in fact criminal, for someone to suggest that in order to improve or modernise an education system, one must do away with national examinations and replace them with continuous assessment, a system of evaluation that is replete with subjectivity and dishonesty.
Continuous assessment is a type of assessment where learners engage in some form of evaluation to assess their retention of concepts on a more regular and continuous process, as distinct from summative assessment, which is a form of evaluation mainly directed at evaluating the level of conceptualisation at the end of a programme.
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In our case, the former will encompass the weekly, fortnightly, termly tests and activities that our children engage in at school, while end of year tests, examinations as well as end of programme examinations (e.g. Grade Seven and O Level) will make up the later.
Both these forms of assessment have weaknesses and strengths. The most notable weakness of continuous assessment is it’s over reliance on individual teachers. It must be the subject teacher, who should set up the assessment task, administer it and also possibly mark it. This is so because of the frequency by which these should be done. It will be logistically and practically impossible for them to be done any other way.
Moreover, their other purpose is to be informative, to enable the subject teacher identify knowledge gaps and work towards remedying them. To this extent, it makes such kind of assessment too reliant on the subject teacher, compromising objectivity.
If learners fail, this would say volumes about you as a teacher, hence no teacher would set a task that will expose his/her weaknesses. Continuous assessment, however, provides timely guidance and intervention because a teacher can identify problems on time.
It is also possible for specific problematic areas to be identified as opposed to an examination, where numerous concepts are being examined simultaneously. The problem with over-relying on continuous assessment is that it demands too much from a teacher, who also needs to be continuously capacitated. It is no secret that such a system will require more resources in the form of textbooks, as more student work will have to be done outside school hours.
For it to be effectively done, smaller classes have to be the norm in our schools. I do not see this ever happening within the foreseeable future. In fact, our classes are getting bigger and more diverse, making continuous assessment, continuous marking and timely feedback impracticable.
Summative assessment (mainly national examinations) provides an objective instrument for a systematic evaluation and categorisation of learners. This allows learners, who are at the same level at school, district and nationally to be examined using the same instrument. One is able to make a judgment of both the education system, as a structure, as well as the quality of the students a particular system is producing.
Furthermore, it allows for international comparisons to be made. Summative assessment as a methodology also provides a measure to change a curriculum if it is seen not to be responding to the requirements of a country, not the other way round.
Examinations such as the Grade Seven and O levels (in retrospect, including the scrapped Zimbabwe Junior Certificate) also provide a “shock” reminder to whoever is writing them that there is a “job” to be done. It provides a form of satisfaction to those who do well, and a reminder to those who do not perform so well. By their very nature, human beings need some form of motivation and reinforcement to work towards a particular goal, and exams provide that in abundance.
The only problem of relying only on summative assessment is that it is conducted long after, often when it’s too late to effect any timely remediation.
A cursory look at these two forms of assessment will show that they work better if used in conjunction. In fact, our current system employs both and this is why we are one of the best.
A country such as South Africa, which is always at the bottom of most rankings, relies too heavily, in my opinion, on continuous assessment. The only national examination written in South Africa, beside the annual national assessments (ANA), is the exit Grade 12 examination; 13 years after a learner starts their education programme. In between, their system utilises mainly continuous assessments. This is what the learned doctor is proposing for Zimbabwe.
An intrinsic, but very important advantage learners draw from writing O level exams is the chance it affords them to identify areas of strength, leading to specialisation at advanced levels. There lies the inimitability of our system and this is why Zimbabwe always outclasses other countries in international rankings. But to decide on which subjects you specialise in at that level requires an objective process of adjudication, and ‘O’ level exams provide that objectivity.
Education by its very nature requires investment. It is very difficult to separate good quality education from resources that must be expended. The two impregnate each other. You invest in order to get quality and you use that quality to get more investment. To scrap examinations and weaken an education system simply to cut on costs is disingenuous.
The problem is that such an imprudent decision affects mainly future, and not the Nziramasanga generation. If resources are used as an excuse to deny a birthright, and we allow it, only to complain later, would be like shutting the stable door after the horse has already bolted. In the not so distant future, the same excuse will be used to deny more services to citizens. This should be resisted. We should and must invest in our education system as this is the only form of inheritance that we can bequeath our children.
As I conclude, I propose that, infact, the correct question that we should be cogitating about as a country in order to show commitment to the development of our education system is whether we need examination fees for Grade Seven and O levels in these difficult economic times? Are these fees not facilitating the exclusion of our children from the education system? Can we think of those children who go to school up to O level, but fail to write the final examination because they cannot afford the examination fees. Our country has enough resources for that purpose, as long as the powers-that-be are stopped from appropriating the same.
●Zenzo Moyo is a PhD student at the University of Johannesburg (and a former teacher). He is currently in Zimbabwe conducting his fieldwork. He has written an article on recent pronouncements on the Nziramasanga Commission concerning the radical changes proposed for Zimbabwe’s education system.
