Grade 11 placement a headache

Grade 11 placement a headache Following its overwhelming grade 10 performance in 2016, the Ohangwena Region is struggling to place all its learners in local schools for grade 11.

Schools in the region are reported to be full, but the regional office is still squeezing pupils in.

The Ohangwena Region came fourth in the 2016 Junior Secondary Certificate results, with about 3 000 learners being promoted to grade 11.

The directorate of education decided to squeeze all these learners into local schools.

One of the schools that had to make room for an unexpectedly high number of learners was Shituwa Senior Secondary School in the Endola circuit.

Shituwa can accommodate 120 grade 11 learners, but now has to cope with 280.

The regional office sent Shituwa 160 learners extra, but the school was not ready for that. The school yesterday sent home all 280 grade 11 learners, telling them to return on 22 January to give the school management time to make the necessary arrangements.

Principal Hedrick Nghinyengwasha said the school was not prepared for such a high number of pupils and needed time to make space for them in its classrooms and hostel.

He said all the pupils were sent home in the interest of fairness.

“We have enough classrooms at the school, but we are not ready to accommodate such number of learners at the moment. Since we do not have a hostel, we were using four classrooms as a boys' hostel. We are going to make arrangements as to where to house these learners and then make classrooms available,” Nghinyengwasha said.

He said the school had about 6 000 learners. Without a hostel building, they nevertheless tried to provide hostel accommodation to learners in grades 10, 11 and 12.

He said the regional council provided the school with temporary hostel facilities that accommodate 80 learners, but they tried other alternatives to accommodate all learners.

“We use the regional council facilities to accommodate some of the girls, while the four classrooms accommodate some of the boys. The remaining learners are accommodated in corrugated-iron structures. Previously we used to have tents, but we replaced them with corrugated-iron sheets for safety,” said Nghinyengwasha.

The Ministry of Education is constructing a hostel the school.

The regional director of education, Isack Hamatwi, said he was in a meeting and could not comment.

Meanwhile, the Oshana Region, which came second in the national examinations, still has space for about 100 grade 11 learners.

“We placed a total of 2 656 learners; 2448 were our full-time learners, 145 part-time learners and 63 learners are from other regions. We still have space in our schools,” said deputy director Gerhard Ndafenongo.





ILENI NANDJATO