Staff Reporter
MASERU — The Pro Vice Chancellor of the National University of Lesotho (NUL), Professor Mafa Sejanamane, says this year’s results at the university are the worst he had seen since he started his teaching career in 1979.
Sejaname told the Sunday Express yesterday that a record number of students had flunked the examinations this year.
“I have not seen anything like this (failure rate). This is the worst I have seen,” Sejanamane said.
The NUL senate has since ordered faculties to investigate what could have caused the poor results.
The deputy registrar instructed deans of faculties to compile reports on the results in a letter on Wednesday.
Sejanamane said the senate wants to have the reports before the university re-opens in August.
He said to describe the results as shocking would be an understatement.
“The word shocking might not be appropriate to describe the results,” he said.
“I don’t think anyone can look at those results and not get a sense of shock. They are terrible. They are devastating.”
“They are out of the ordinary’’.
Sejanamane said although he did not have the statistics and analyses of the results he was aware that in some programmes less than 40 percent of students are going to proceed without taking supplementary examinations.
Some of the worst results are in fourth year accounting, management and business courses.
He described the failure rate in those programmes as “a complete massacre”.
The results in some science programmes are also terrible, he said.
Sejanamane said some students of French and Geography had not written examinations because they did not have lecturers for the whole semester.
When asked what could have caused the high failure rate Sejanamane said he did not want to pre-empt the investigations that are being done by the faculties.
He however said some of the factors are already in the public domain.
It is well known, he said, that the university has been having a high staff turnover and has not been able to attract highly qualified lecturers.
“But before we start making conclusions it is important that we wait for the reports from the faculties so that we understand the real causes,” he added.
“Senate wants to make an informed decision on the issue but that can only happen when the deans have submitted their reports”.
Vice Chancellor Professor Sharon Siverts told the Sunday Express that the causes of the higher-than-normal failure rate were varied.
She said so far she has been getting indications from the faculties that the decision to reduce the semester from 14 to 12 weeks could have been one of the major contributing factors.
“Some departments had resignations midway through the semester while others said they had to work with part-time lecturers whom they claim are difficult to manage,” Siverts said.
“Some are saying students were attending classes six days a week and they did not have time to prepare for the examinations,” she said.
“In some faculties students are saying they did not get feedback throughout the semester.”
She however said there has to be an analysis in each course to establish what really happened.
“As of now what we have are claims that have to be verified.”
Siverts said Education and Social Sciences had a huge number of students writing supplementary examinations.