By Saboi Imboela
I wonder whose been sitting to make the new education policies and what their motive is.
Do they move around Zambia to find out the benefits and impact of their policies?
First and foremost, this policy of not teaching English from grade 1 to 4 in a country where English is the official language has made it very hard for many of them to learn English.
In most rural schools, you need an interpreter to talk to pupils as high as grade 8,9s because they can’t hear a word in English.
They can pass grade 7 because its multiple choice and someone can do guess work, but grade 10 is about explaining your answers.
So how do you expect people that don’t know English to answer?
And we all know that languages are best learnt when you are young, so they need to learn English from grade one as we all did, including the same people making these funny polices.
The latest policy and saddest one is where now examination numbers are expiring just after someone writes an exam once and fails.
Meaning they can’t repeat grade 9 if they fail the exams but have to go all the way to grade 6.
In this grade 6 class in the attached picture are pupils that failed grade 9 and now have had to go back all the way to grade 6 because the new system can’t allow them to repeat grade 9 or even grade 8 as they will have no examination numbers.
This is what is happening now in most rural schools and so many are stopping school because of not bearing the embarrassment of repeating all the way to grade 6 from grade 9.
The bold ones are putting the shame aside and seated here are our girls who have now gone back to grade 6 from grade 9.
The rich people in Lusaka will even argue that there is an option of GCE but GCE is expensive and these pupils and their parents can’t afford it.
Yet we want to end these high rates of teenage pregnancies and marriages and high school dropout rates with one hand but the other hand is making policies that is making it impossible for our girls and even boys to get educated.
Please look critically into these policies you are making and reverse them as soon as you can, these poor girls and boys all over Zambia are relying on the good decisions you make in those offices u sit.
They don’t need your money, just your conscience as you think of what’s best for the child in the remotest part of this country.
