Namibia National Student's Organisation Wants Shortcomings in Education Addressed

[Harold F. Schiffman]

Nanso Wants Shortcomings in Education Addressed

The Namibian (Windhoek)
January 18, 2006

By Denver Isaacs
Windhoek

THE biggest obstacle in the way of developing Namibia's education sector
is the country's inability to "state problems as they are", the Namibia
National Student's Organisation (Nanso) said yesterday. Nanso was replying
to an earlier statement by Ministry of Education Permanent Secretary
Vitalis Ankama, who last week appealed to the public not to call pupils
who repeat grades "failures", as this would kill their resolve to do
better.

Ankama stated that it would cost Government too much to allow students to
keep repeating the same grades over and over. "We do not consider students
that are promoted in spite of not meeting the basic academic requirements
for their grades as failures", Nanso said yesterday, "but view them as
casualties of a system that is unable to respond to their academic needs."
Ankama said last week that the Ministry was aware of the weaknesses in the
education system and has thus come up with a 15-year strategic plan called
Education and Training Sector Improvement Programme (Etsip).

Nanso responded to this by saying that Etsip has proved unable to provide
relief for the thousands expelled from formal education each year, and has
also not been able to introduce a fair and progressive language policy.
"The inability of Etsip to address the yearly circus of finding schools
for thousands of grade ones, eights and elevens is perhaps the most
visible depressant of current practices in the sector," Nanso added.

The student organisation stated that it does support Etsip, but as a
student interest group it is compelled to identify shortcomings in
Government policies and programmes that affect the education of its
members.

http://allafrica.com/stories/200601180036.html


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Copyright  2006 The Namibian.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------