A senior education official says studies have shown that poor Grade Seven
results were a result of the practice of allowing Grade Two learners to proceed
to higher levels when they were illiterate and innumerate.
Speaking at Mutendi Primary School at Mbungo Estates when she presented the
school with the 2019 Secretary’s Merit Award last week, the Permanent
Secretary for the Ministry of Primary and Secondary Education (MOPSE),
Tumisang Thabela, said at least 25 percent of the 2021 Grade Two learners that
proceeded to Grade Three were recorded as illiterate while 28 percent were
innumerate thereby affecting Grade Seven results.
She said this was revealed through the Zimbabwe Early Learning Assessment
(ZELA), which intended to determine pupils’ literacy and numeracy levels as
they moved from Grade Two to Grade Three, adding that schools needed to
ensure that learners had mastered the foundational learning that encompasses
the four Rs – reading, writing, arithmetic and digital literacy.
“When we look at the ZELA statistics of 2021 for Grade Two, it shows that at
the end of 2021 the Grade Two pupils, who went to Grade Three and therefore
are in Grade Four this year; about 25 percent could not read. They are illiterate
and about 28 percent could not add and subtract. They are innumerate. So, we
need then to check and see how we arrest that, because if you carry with these
gaps it means you continue going down because they are carrying the gaps.”
She said that these pupils were affected by the Covid-19 pandemic and these
were some of the flags that the system needed to deal with.
“We are driving foundational learning because we realised that most of the
complains that we are giving ourselves or receiving about poor pass rates at
Grade Seven are because children left Grade Two without the necessary literacy
and numeracies that they should have had. In other words they were not ready
to go into Grade Three,” she said.
“A child who cannot read nor compute simple Mathematics cannot learn or
grasp concepts of higher levels. We should ensure that every child by end of
Grade Two, which is by the end of the infancy module, has all the foundation
literacy. So, we have right from the beginning to make sure – all heads – that by
end of Grade Two we have no one who can’t read; no one whatsoever who is
innumerate, no one who is digitally illiterate. Only then, can we make sure that
every child gains from our education services and come out with positive
outcomes.”
Thabela said literacy gaps meant that children would be unable to benefit much
from activities happening in the school and called upon the schools inspectors,
District Schools Inspectors (DSIs) and the Provincial Education Directors
(PEDs) and their teams to use the diagnostic tools that were developed through

the learner welfare, the special needs education division and check the levels of
literacy for every child from Grade Three upwards.