Ndalichako tasks Necta over system

Dar es Salaam. The newly appointed Minister for Education Prof Joyce Ndalichako yesterday put management of the National Examination Council to task and ordered them to give explanation, within seven days, on why they think the new secondary national examination grading using the Grade Point Average (GPA) system is better than the old one using Divisions.

Speaking at a meeting with Necta staff in a tour of the institution yesterday Prof Ndalichako, who headed Necta before resigning in October 2013, said she also wanted to know, by next Thursday, why private examination candidates are subjected to continuous assessment (CA) when doing their national exams.

Prof Ndalichako also handles the higher education, vocational training and science and technology dockets.

The minister’s surprise and apparent censure of the new system only two years after its implementation rekindles controversies that surrounded his resignation from Necta in 2013, one month before the new grading system was announced by the ministry of Education officials. There were reports that political interference influenced her departure..

But in an interesting twist yesterday, however, some Necta officials wondered aloud why she was questioning both the GPA and CA arrangements while their re-introduction was finalized while she was still at the helm of the institution.

She, however, categorically said she had turned down the proposals for subjecting private examination candidates to the CA.

“If you are talking about the proposals for CA that were sent to my office when I was at Necta then you must be aware that I rejected them,” she retorted.

She added; “I am not aware of any country in the world that has CA for private examination candidates. How do you assess them? Basing on what, given the fact that they study on their own?” she questioned.

Responding to the minister, the executive secretary at Necta, Dr Charles Msonde, defended the GPA system saying it now had popular support and was introduced after wide consultations with stakeholders and with full blessings from the ministry of Education.

He further elaborated that the GPA was also supposed to streamline grading with universities, hence simplifying admission to the higher learning institutions by students.

Prof Ndalichako contradicted the argument of university admission simplification, however, and asked deputy permanent Secretary of the ministry, Prof Simon Msanjila, who had accompanied her to explain whether the claim was true.

Prof Msanjila, who had previously worked at the ministry’s department of Higher Learning, denied it.

“We literally use the old Division system for admission, I can say,” he quipped.

Dr Msonde assured the minister that the Council would conduct a review of various issues including the grading system and the CA arrangement and promised that other challenges that have emerged in the current system would also be sorted out.

In November 2013 the ministry of Education introduced a new grading system using the GPA for students sitting for ordinarly secondary and advanced secondary certificates which came into effect in 2014. The new system, which is similar to the one used in most Tanzanian universities, replaced the one of categorising passing levels in divisions.

Categorisation in the specific subjects grading also changed from the A, B, C, D and F for certificate of secondary education results and from A, B, C, D, E, S in advanced secondary certificate to A, B+, B, C, D, E and F.

The new grading system came with the re-introduction of CA, 27 years after it was scraped. The CA was introduced in 1976 after the government had changed the Cambridge School curriculum systems which relied more on written final exams with no input on students’ performance in their entire school years. It was scraped in 1989 because it was subject for abuse with some teachers cooking marks and favouring some students over others, among other factors.

Changes in the grading system came immediately after mass failures in the Form Four national examinations the previous year and were severely criticized by education experts and opposition politicians.