The Zimbabwe School Examinations Council (ZIMSEC) says there is nothing wrong with Advanced Level candidates attaining high grades in public examinations.
This comes after a former Ruya Adventist Secondary School student Tadiwanashe Mavetera scored 10As in the November 2022 ZIMSEC A’ Level examination while at Pamushana High School in Bikita there was a high yield of As with 103 students scoring more than 15 points each.
Pamushana High School’s best student, Abraham Ndlovu scored 30 points and he got straight As in Computer Science, Chemistry, Physics, Geography, Pure Mathematics and Statistics.
ZIMSEC spokesperson Nicky Dlamini said people should understand that access to learning resources has increased, hence high passes attained at A’ Level. She said:
Our mandate is to award candidates according to their performances. We do not change grades because candidates are performing well.
One thing that we should realise is that the candidates that are being compared now have better access to learning resources and extra lessons that they are exposed to.
Therefore, it will be obvious that those that have access to these resources will perform much better.
It does not affect the credibility of examinations at all because we assess the curriculum being taught to these candidates.
The public should investigate how were the students being taught. What was their learning system like?
How did that school produce those results? ZIMSEC comes after teaching, we do not come before teaching.
If these candidates are doing well, people should then look at the teaching to say there is a good teacher behind the candidate.
We benchmark regionally and internationally for our assessment standards.
We do not judge or look at individual candidates, we look at assessment standards, and that is our mandate.
Ministry of Primary and Secondary Education Deputy Minister Edgar Moyo said the improved grades were normal. | The Sunday News