Page 16 - Professorial Lecture - Prof Kasanda

underqualified teachers in our education system (Education Management
Information System (EMIS), 2020, 2012). EMIS (2010, p. 74, 2012, p. 74)
note that, “Although the desired qualification of teachers was three or
four year tertiary education, considerable numbers of teachers in the
secondary phase had qualifications lower than Grade 12”. This number
included 224 mathematics teachers out of 1303 at the secondary phase,
31 out of 193 mathematics teachers at the Primary and secondary school
phase and 493 mathematics teachers at the primary school level out of
2050 in 2010 and 2012 (EMIS, 2010, p.74; EMIS, 2012, p. 74). Other
identified factors include lack of materials, among others as negatively
impacting on learners’ performance in mathematics (EMIS, 2010, 2012;
Oundo, 2013) among others. This situation in not peculiar to Namibia
alone, Sa’ad, Adamu, & Sadiq (2014, p. 39) also identified similar factors in
Nigerian secondary schools:

… inadequate qualified teachers of mathematics, poor teaching
methods, inadequate mathematics teaching materials,
overcrowded (or) mathematics classes, lack of libraries and
mathematical laboratories, lack of supervision and inspection of
mathematics teachers as well as lack of parental participation in
the education of children are some of the causes of poor
performance in mathematics …

The statistics in Table 1 (a) and 1(b) for the years 2010 to 2014 provide
some evidence as to the learners’ performance in mathematics at Grade
12.

Grade 12 learners in Namibia may either follow the Ordinary level in
mathematics or Higher level depending on their ability and performance
at Grade 10 or sometimes while still in Grade 11. It should be pointed out
that the NSSC (Ordinary level) is for most learners in the country and often
taken by large numbers of learners at grade 12 (see Table 1(a)). On the
other hand the NSSC (Higher level) is taken by able students and as such
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