Introduction
LAST week I complained bitterly about the wrong deification of statistics which I described as weapons of imperialist machinations among their multifarious uses.
I had promised to demonstrate how these have been manipulated by imperial institutions like the World Bank, IMF, WHO and Red Cross.
This week, I want to contribute to the current raging debate about the Zimbabwe School Examinations Council (ZIMSEC) ‘O’ Level pass rate analysis.
The facts
The total number of candidates that sat for the November 2014 ‘O’ Level examinations stood at 316 003.
The ZIMSEC announced that of these 30,85 percent passed with ‘five Cs’ or better.
It then proceeded to rank the schools that passed the examinations and came up with what it called the top 100 schools where Monte Cassino Secondary leads the pack with a 100 percent pass rate out of a total candidature of 83 students.
The overall impression of this ranking to all and sundry is that this school is the best in the country.
By the same benchmark, Kriste Mambo Secondary School is number two with a 98,17 percentage pass rate out of a candidature of 100 students.
It is followed by Nyanga High School with 97,92 percent out of a candidature of 96 students.
Note too that perched far below these ‘front runners’ is the lease of Pamushana High School.
It is ranked number 16 on the log with 91,63 percent out of a candidature of 239 students meaning that it passed more than double the number of students which Monte Cassino Secondary School, the crowned number one passed.
Yes Pamushana passed 211 students.
Do your calculations.
This also means if it had enrolled only these, it would have had a 100 percent pass rate out of a candidature of the 211.
Another way of re-examining such a scenario without being too stubborn would be to say Pamushana’s pass rate, measured against that of Monte Cassino, is 240 percent, no less, which then begs the question: which one is the better school; and remember this point is said notwithstanding the fact that Pamushana and indeed many other lowly ranked schools do not screen the students they enroll while the top five schools and more do.
Statistical illusions
There are several points that fault the ZIMSEC pass rate analysis which the nation cannot ignore.
First, let me remind you about what I said about ‘Statistics’ in my previous installment which we all need to guard against given the fact that statistics are quite often used to misinform especially if taken at face value.
You want to be reminded of what one British electoral candidate once said about statistics when he was faced by the enormity of statistical discouragement.
Disraeli challenged statistics from an opinion poll that had given him minus 1 000 percent chances of success.
Refusing to be discouraged by the false statistical prophecy, Disraeli correctly retorted: “I know full well that there are lies and that after lies come damn lies and that after dam lies come statistics.”
He was right.
He won the elections.
What then are we to learn from Disraeli’s contempt of statistics as the superlative of lies?
ZIMSEC and the illusion of pass rates
Zimbabweans bask, basked and will bask in the false glory promised by pass rates measured against the colonial benchmark of ‘five ‘O’ Levels’.
The ZIMSEC has the audacity to present a statistical analysis of those who have fulfilled this colonial segregatory mandate of ‘five O Levels’ and the whole nation joins in celebrating satisfying colonial measurements with hardly any introspection.
What philosophy informs such bankruptcy?
The point to make is there is no Zimbabwean child who is more important than another.
Accepting ZIMSEC analysis as is implies accepting the moral lapse that the whooping +200 000 candidates (70 percent) who passed three and fewer subjects are failures not worth parental attraction.
The ZIMSEC analysis of results clearly condemns these ‘unpardonable sinners’. And in passive or active complicity, the whole nation rubber-stamps this error of commission by omission by their conspiratorial silence which begs another big question: where is the nation’s conscience?
You cannot even learn from your Bible where Jesus teaches about a good shepherd who leaves 99 sheep to hunt for one lost sheep.
You pamper ZIMSEC for abandoning 70 sheep lost and celebrate the available presence of only 30 then you say you are shepherds and shepherdesses?
Perhaps my people are perishing out of lack of knowledge.
Take cue from African wisdom.
A parent values all his/her children with all their different abilities knowing full well that each one of them has his/her own occasion to shine.
That is the nature of society.
Even those dubbed ‘fools’ have occasions where they reserve the ‘wise’ just as they say every dog has its day.
African philosophy and curriculum review
African wisdom (unhu/ubuntu) is functionalist in perspective.
It is based on the understanding that society is a totality which is greater than the sum total of its individual parts.
That is what must guide the curriculum review process.
It must make provision for everyone to excel.
I contend that a candidate with ‘three As’ has demonstrated unsurpassed potential in those areas and could be even better than one who has scored ‘three Cs’ in those and ‘two Cs’ in two others.
Why then should such a candidate be subjected to the tyranny of labelling?
Besides, if one excels in one subject, say carpentry, can this candidate not excel in carpentry as a career?
Besides basic literacy, does such a special candidate need English, Shona, Bible knowledge etc. to become an excellent carpenter?
Jesus himself was a carpenter through apprenticeship serviced by his father Joseph. Did he have ‘five ‘O’ Levels’?
These are issues that the curriculum review process must take into account.
Ndiko saka vakuru vachiti chenga ose manhanga hapana risina mhodzi.
We can’t all be intellectuals and academics.
Demystifying Exams
ZIMSEC is just an extension of the assessment process which is undertaken by schools at all times.
Diagnostic and continuous assessment is in fact more important than summative assessment.
According to a correct understanding of education, the prime goal of learning should not be about certificates alone but about skills, values and knowledge acquisition.
After all, life itself is the best examination separating real and white elephants. When you understand this, you cease to pine about small mishaps such as exam leakages.
You will know that the real tragedy lies in the leakage of consciousness!