Regional rankings in Form Six exam results shocking

Dar es Salaam. Mara Region has dropped 20 positions in the Form Six national examination results coming to 25th position out of 29 regions compared to last year.

The National Examinations Council of Tanzania (Necta) released the regional performance in the Form Six national examinations showing huge regional shift of positions compared to last year’s results.

However, Mara Regional Education Officer Emmanuel Kisonga yesterday denied that his region had performed poorly, noting that the number of grades in most schools in the region had improved.

“In most of the schools I visited, they were celebrating because the number of students who scored division one to three had increased,” he said.

Under Tanzania’s education system, students scoring divisions 1, 2 and 3 are likely to admitted to higher learning institutions.

Island regions, including Zanzibar West, North Pemba and South Pemba were the three last ranked regions placed at 27th, 28th and 29th respectively.

At the same time, Mtwara Region apart from registering less schools in the top ten best schools, emerged the first. This is an improvement from the third place it was ranked last year.

Lindi Region has maintained its second place this year, the same as that of the previous year while Geita Region, which ranked first last year dropped two positions to third place.

Dar es Salaam Region, which registered three schools in the top ten (Canossa High School, Feza Boys and Feza Girls), was ranked 26th from 20th place of last year. This was attributed to poor performance of some schools in the region including Jagwani Secondary School, which was ranked 541th out 543 schools regionalwise.

Unlike Dar es Salaam, Coastal Region, which registered four schools in the top 10 (Kibaha, Marian Boys, Marian Girls and Ahmes school), climbed 4 positions to 19th place from 23rd place in the previous results.

Other regions that showed a big improvement included Tanga (5th), Singida (7th), Tabora (8th), Manyara (9th), and Simiyu 10th in 2017 from 13th, 11th, 18th, 24th and 26th positions respectively.

Simiyu Regional Commissioner Anthony Mtaka revealed that establishment of academic camps in his region was the main reason for their improved performance.

On his Facebook account, Mr Mtaka noted, “Academic camps in Simiyu: Classes of performance of division 1, 2 and 3 have increased while number of zeros have fallen”.