By Bongiwe Dlamini

MBABANE:Owen Nxumalo,the Minister of Education and Training has noted the decline in candidates performance when announcing the Form V results on Tuesday.

Addressing a press conference, the Education and Training Minister thanked teachers and Principals for their hard work.

Eswatini is facing shortage of working equipment in schools including teachers and a results, some teachers are employed by the Government on contracts and paid a mere five thousand Rands(R5000.00) per-month.

“There has been a decline in candidate performance when compared to 2022 and previous years. The national pass rate has generally declined for EGCSE, EPCSE and IGCSE examinations. Predicted grades provided by the schools before the examination session alerted us that the overall performance this year was expected to be lower than in previous years due to the dispositions in learning that candidates encountered since 2019.The Ministry of Education and Training appreciates the hard work done by head teachers, teachers, learners and parents during the 2023 academic year. Teachers worked tirelessly to cover the syllabus.Moving forward, it is imperative for candidates, centres, teachers and parents to note that ECESWA is committed to maintaining assessment standards in line with other assessment organisations/ examination boards across the world. This is essential to secure the confidence and credibility of EGCSE/EPCSE qualifications both at home and abroad”, said the Education and Training Minister.

Reached for comments by this Swaziland News on Tuesday evening,Lot Vilakati,the Secretary General(SG) of the Swaziland National Association of Teachers(SNAT) said, they warned Government to prioritize education.

“We anticipated a decline in performance,we have been calling for government to prioritize education through ensuring that teachers are employed and employed on permanent basis.We have been also calling for adequate funding for education,and supply of relevant learning resources in schools and sadly, government has not responded positively to our call, the decline in performance to us is a creation of government through her lack of cooperation on who does not have the political will to improve education,the decline in performance happened in the EPC results and JC results,it was not going to be of difference with this one because the same conditions that affected performance in the mentioned examinations did not exclude form 5,We also want to say that the re sitting for the examinations by the form 5,after allegations of malpractice somehow contributed to the decline, the learners never got to re prepare for the exams”, said the SNAT Secretary General.