The Ministry of Primary and Secondary Education says it will come up with a policy to limit the number of subjects that are written by Advanced Level candidates to four.
This comes after parents and guardians, among other stakeholders, expressed misgivings over the high grades that were scored by A Level candidates in the Zimbabwe School Examinations Council (ZIMSEC) 2022 exams.
Some candidates sat for as many as ten subjects, against the standard three subjects, while high grades were recorded of up to 50 points.
In a Ministerial statement on the management of the leakages of some Ordinary Level examination question papers presented in the National Assembly last Wednesday, the Minister of Primary and Secondary Education, Evelyn Ndlovu, said:
At A level, how can people believe in people who attain 20 points? I think we need to come up with a policy to limit the number of subjects that are written by our children.
We really need to come up with a policy as a Ministry that, at most, a child should register for four subjects at A level.
The issue of writing 10 subjects and all why? There is confusion, so I think; we will come up with a policy so that at least our children can write four subjects.
After all, our universities require only three subjects – Yes, they need three.
So, the maximum, we will recommend, as a Ministry, that we come up with a policy where we reduce the number of A level subjects.
At Advanced Level, each A passing grade carries five points at A level, with a B carrying four points and a C carrying three points, D (two points) and E (one point), with grades not carrying points being Ordinary (O) and Fail (F).