Over 60 percent of pupils in grade one to grade four are unable to read and write in Kitwe district, Copperbelt Province Education Officer (PEO) Felix Ngoma has disclosed.
Mr. Ngoma said there was therefore urgent need to uplift literate levels in schools because the lower primary level is the foundation of education that has great impact on the performance of the pupils at secondary school level.
He said the provincial office has since devised a strategic plan to address illiteracy levels in schools.
He said the strategy is aimed at ensuring that grade one pupils know how to read and write properly before they go into grade two.
Mr. Ngoma, who was speaking at the teachers’ stakeholders meeting, stated that the programme will be extended to grade two classes.
He explained that the programme will involve training of grade one and two teachers so that they apply the teaching strategy that has been devised to ensure that pupils in the first grade know how to read before they go into grade two.
And Mr. Ngoma has disclosed that the provincial education office has set performance standards that teachers should observe to ensure that all schools begin to register a 100 per cent pass rate by the year 2021.
He said among the interventions put to achieve this include the requirement for teachers to conduct tests every month, the requirement for head teachers and their deputies to have classes, re-training of grade one teachers as well as training teachers in leadership and management skills among others.
And Kitwe District Commissioner (DC) Binwell Mpundu, who also attended the teachers’ stakeholders meeting, said his office will be conducting tours to schools to monitor teachers’ performance so that the general performance of pupils is improved in the district.
Mr. Mpundu also pledged to sponsor pupils with outstanding performance in selected schools in order to motivate them to work extra hard.
And speaking earlier, Kitwe District Education Officer (DEO) Allan Kaoma said his office has put improvement of literacy levels a priority.
Mr. Kaoma said the importance of literacy cannot be over-emphasized as it greatly contributes to the social and economic development of a country.
He pledged that by the end of the current term, 90 per cent of pupils in grade one will be able to read after the implementation of the newly devised strategy to improve literacy levels.
Meanwhile Parklands, Chibote and St. Francis Secondary Schools have won awards for outstanding results in the 2017 examinations.
If nothing is done to improve the situation these Copperbelt Province lower primary pupils can’t read and write will be tomorrow’s Kampyongos
This is a provincial disaster worse than cholera and PF should do something about it from the provincial point of view and nationally because this is a cancer that has the potential to spread throughout the country. The guys who are wasting time bootlicking over a coffee at Protea Hotel in Ndola, about how CK for opposing the wrongs, should be arrested should refocus their efforts and make a difference to out children. Our Children should be saved from being condemned to being like Kampyongo please.
Inattentive parents and half baked teachers
That is not a problem bruv, we have got the fire engine and ambulances!
Who says that is a problem when kids can’t read and write? We’ve got this brother, we’ve got this!
Zambia the real Sh1thole!
Most Zambians including our leaders can’t get to understand this. They think they’ve stollen today and all is well, no! What you have stolen is set in motion, it is a travelling bullet yet to meet with the citizens to death. Basically you have blood on your hands.
1. We have stunted growth in the country
2. We have girl child prostitutes
2. We have cholera
3. We have GBV and killings are on the upswing.
We decide to embezzle funds without an effort of quelling the sh1t but only by word of mout?
Blood is on your hands. Chiluba cried about this… mark my words… right now you the bose and we respect the office of the president but not the individual holding office.
What do you expect from kids when their only role models are jerabos, only thing on their minds is to become jerabos, they forget that copper is a diminishing resource, of course they can’t know, they can’t read.
But i don’t think it’s only my kitwe, my home town. But this is the scenario country wide, one grade 12 was just asking me how to write a job application letter, i was like boy, i was taught by my teacher in grade 7 how to write a job application letter. It’s fact education standards have gone down, a 2017 grade could be even on lesser level with a grade 7 of 90s, 80s,70s.
2017 grade 12.
I blame this on PF and Sata. When he came into power he forced teachers to teach children in local languages but expect them to take exams in English. What sort of f0olishness is this?
PF is full of stupid *****s!
..And busy promoting and teaching ichibemba in schools.What do you expect?
American undergrads start their D at 60%. Zambian undergrads start way lower. So now bring a child who is semi literate and keep telling that child it is OK to have a pass less than normal and you have a cholera infested, low expectation population that thinks half-measures are a norm and not an exception. Go figure.
There is need to adopt a an evaluation tool that can be utilized on a regular basis to measure progress achieved towards excellence. The research instrument must be developed by national and regional professional educational testing centers. It is wrong to politicize the literacy of future generations by issuing random statements. This type of exercise is better left in the hand of researchers working in close collaboration with international partners, including UNICEF and UNESCO.
That is exactly the problem Dr… we do not need piecemeal problem solving. My analysis over this is utilise innovation systems as policy a policy tool to resolve these major challenges.
Sectors interlink and I personally think that is the right approach… Otherwise we go by piecemeal problems as suggested is the reason we are where we are… doing more of the same over and over 53 years later.
Zambian educational researchers are partly to blame for the mess. We were told that children acquire literacy when they are taught in their language for the first four years of their primary education. The researchers cited previous research. Then, what has gone wrong? The Zambian educational system is always at experimental level. policy makers keep on changing the curricula at will.
How these pupils could have spent 4 years at school, and still not be able to read, is shocking in my opinion. That’s 4 years they will never get back, and we all know how fast children learn when they are young! We were all taught the basics in Grade 1. Has the syllabus changed that much? If not, it has to be the teachers! I can’t think of any other reason.
Some thing seems wrong or is it me missing something……the resident PF rats on LT have just been dancing at moodys upgrading Zambias credit status yet we have millions of citizens with out clean drinking water and sanitation with cholera going rampant and we have some of the worst literacy levels seen in schools …..
Thats the start… am a strong critic of the president, but give credit where it is due – am not forgiving the fire engines and the ambulances!!! including cholera and corruption, blood is on their hands… time is ticking! that was and is sh1t!!! but please let us criticise with Zambia at heart not because we dislike the president.
Just give us more money in our pockets we shall surely teach them how to read and write. Kufola tifola ma change less than half of what Colonel gets as housing allowance. I stay in a house grass thatched plastered with mud. I can’t go and Com bak to
When did they change back to DEO and PEO?
This is a National problem.
The Ministry of Education, Social and Child Development should look into improving literacy rates of our children, youths and Adults.
Zimbabwe has a higher literacy rate than Zambia.
I weep for the future of my country.
The push for volume (as many pupils in school) over substance (the quality of education) has led us here!
Grades 1 – 4 are the key foundation stages for reading, writing & arithmetic skills, 5 – 7 is meant 2 prepare them 4 Sec School…
We should just go back to the old system some of us went through. We were subjected to selection examinations in Standard Two (Grade 4), in Standard Four (Grade 6), and Standard 5/6 (Grade 7/8), before proceeding to Form 1 (Secondary school). If you failed, you had to repeat the standard (or grade) and could only proceed to the next level if you passed. As a result, most of us had very good command of written and spoken English by the time we got to Grade Seven. The current system does not rigorously test these kids at all. I am personally always disgusted whenever I hear the Minister of Education boasting about the improvement in the pass rate when these kids can hardly read or write!!
The quality of teachers being churned out by the so-called teacher training institutions also leaves much to be desired. Most of those going to these institutions are those who failed Grade 12 examinations. I know of cases where these institutions admit trainee teachers who failed “Level English. These trainee teachers then repeat the subject while they are training as teachers!! This is particularly rampant in private teacher training colleges which have mushroomed in every nook and cranny of this cursed country! Cry my beloved country!
The quality of teachers being churned out by the so-called teacher training institutions also leaves much to be desired. Most of those going to these institutions are those who failed Grade 12 examinations. I know of cases where these institutions admit trainee teachers who failed “O” Level English. These trainee teachers then repeat the subject while they are training as teachers!! This is particularly rampant in private teacher training colleges which have mushroomed in every nook and cranny of this cursed country! Cry my beloved country!
There are many in Zambian High and Secondary schools who can’t express themselves in English.
At Facts check your facts properly. Primary school teachers in the seventies and late eighties were either form five failures or form threes/twos. Its only in the nineties coming to the millennium period that they are grade twelves with better grades. The problems in our schools could be a combination of various factors between home and school. These factors must be researched and analyzed before being published.
Umugoregore
You must be a very young person. I am speaking from experience and on the basis of facts that I have. What you are saying is just the opposite of the reality. From the 1960s to the early nineties, most teachers were more qualified, better trained, and more committed than the current crop of primary school teachers. I am a proud product of the teachers you are referring to as failures. Haven’t you heard of the recent revelations by the Teaching Council of Zambia of 500 teachers with forged certificates? Cases of leakages and forged certificates, which have now become rampant, were unheard of in the past.
There are just too many experiments, whose findings are never brought forward for discussion before being implemented! For example, each time we have a change of government there are ‘reforms’ in the education sector. Case in point are the changes that came with the PF government, like the abolition of basic schools, teaching in local languages, etc! And you expect the same teachers, without any further training to implement whatever is being proposed!
Reintroduce sub a and sub b and exams to get to Grade 3
All Secondary School teachers in Bots are University of Botswana graduates. about 50% of Primary School teachers are also University of Botswana Graduates. We must move very radically in Zambia by shoring up the quality of public education in the country at all levels so that the quality of citizens is improved. Sadly. the PF love ignorance and laziness as such any dreams of a better country under them is a trip in madness.
Umugoregore
You must be a very young person. I am speaking from experience and on the basis of facts that I have. What you are saying is just the opposite of the reality. From the 1960s to the early nineties, most teachers were more qualified, better trained, and more committed than the current crop of primary school teachers. I am a proud product of the teachers you are referring to as failures. Haven’t you heard of the recent revelations by the Teaching Council of Zambia of 500 teachers with forged certificates? Cases of leakages and forged certificates, which have now become rampant, were unheard of in the past.