Mpopoma High School continues to shine

Auxilia Katongomara, Chronicle Reporter
MPOPOMA High School continues to shine as one of Bulawayo’s educational powerhouses, producing 29 pupils with 15 points and above in last year’s Advanced Level public examinations.

The school’s excellent record contributed to Bulawayo’s recorded 84, 2 percent pass rate.

A total of 68 learners from schools across Bulawayo attained 15 points and above.

In an interview yesterday, Bulawayo Metropolitan acting Provincial Education Director, Mrs Olicah Kaira described the results as impressive.

The results are from 30 learning areas ranging from STEM, humanities and languages, design and technology and commercials. “Our overall performance for A level was 84, 2 percent against 88, 4 percent which we attained in 2016 which is a decrease of 4, 2 percent and we get worried by the decrease as a province because we were looking forward to having that as an increase,” said Mrs Kaira.

She said the total candidature for 2017 for candidates who registered two or more subjects was 3 137, composed of 1 078 males and 1 659 females.

“We have 68 learners who achieved 15 points and above and from these learners we have one learner from Mpopoma High School who attained 23 points.

“There are six learners with 20 points, three from Mpopoma, one from St Bernards, one from Maranatha and one is from Dominican Convent,” said Mrs Kaira.

“Among these learners, with qualitative results, Mpopoma came tops because it produced 27 learners with 15 points and above followed by Msiteli with seven with 15 points and above”.

Mrs Kaira said 10 pupils scored 19 points while seven attained 18 points with three getting 17, four got 16 and the rest achieved 15. “As a province our A level results are good at A level because we find ourselves recordings As in specific learning areas,” she said.

Mrs Kaira said 2 642 pupils passed two or more subjects in the examinations. “We have learners who achieved eight or more points, in Sciences; we had 212 boys and 119 girls. In Arts, those who attained 10 points and above are 169 males and 408 females.

“For sciences we start at eight points because that’s a pass mark compared to other learning areas where we start at 10 points. It doesn’t mean others failed but because there could be others with six or so points but here we are focusing on qualitative passes,” she said.

For Commercials, 157 pupils attained 10 points and above, 87 males and 70 females.

Mrs Kaira said 349 learners attained As in IsiNdebele, 221 As in mathematics, biology 43 As, chemistry 29 As, Physics 29 As and Geography 79 As across the province.

She said due to the decrease in pass rate, the province would continue with school enhancement programmes (SEP) with the National University of Science and Technology and Lupane State University.

“We refer that as NUST –SEP, LU-SEP with Lupane. NUST we are dealing with STEM learning areas physics, chemistry, biology and mathematics whereby our pupils have extra lessons on Saturdays in their various districts assisted by their teachers and NUST lecturers.

“The same applies with commercial studies under Lupane State University where our learners are assisted with economics, accounting, business enterprises, commerce and business studies,” said Mrs Kaira.

“Over and above our own effort in the classroom we will continue to make sure we give quality contact time to our learners. We have no reason why children should fail at Advanced Level because they would have passed their O levels anyway. At A level we don’t have to talk about failing anymore”.

Mrs Kaira said the Ministry had done away with the ranking of schools as it was misleading due to different circumstances in the schools.

“We cannot compare a school with 170 pupils and a school with 16 pupils. Our schools have different resources and requirements. Ranking demotivates other hard working schools. I said Mpopoma was the highest because it produced 29 As with 160 candidates,” she said. —@AuxiliaK