By Staff Reporter MASERU — Details of the extent of the shocking failure rate at the National University of Lesotho (NUL) emerged this week amidst dismay from some insiders who are calling for the resignation of Vice-Chancellor Prof Sharon Siverts. Since last week faculties have been compiling reports that the Senate hopes will explain why a record number of students flunked this year. The Lesotho Times has the summaries of the results which show that a majority of the students at the university will have to write supplementary examinations. Most shocking are the results in science and business related programmes. The situation is also quite bad in humanities. The “carnage”, as Pro Vice-Chancellor Mafa Sejanamane calls it, is in the first and fourth years. In fourth year Bachelor of Marketing 70 percent failed while in the Bachelor of Accounting degree 75 percent could not make the grade. The best grade in the Bachelor of Marketing was a Second Class – Second Division which was attained by only three students in a class of 20. In fourth year BA Urban and Regional Planning 18 out of 23 students failed and 13 out of 22 students failed their BA Statistics and Demography. In the Bachelor of Management a whopping 81 percent failed. First year The results for first-year students are also disastrous. For instance 76 out of 115 students failed to make the grade in the Bachelor of Commerce programme. Only 17 out of 65 Bachelor of Social Work students passed. In BA Social Science only 7.1 percent of students passed. The situation is equally bad in the common subjects that first-year students are required to take. In Education 44 out of 48 students flunked their science courses. In General Science 84 out of 144 students failed while in nursing 18 out of 32 students could not make it. The summaries show that 26 out of 44 students in the Agriculture programme made the grade. In Environmental Science 11 out of 13 students failed their science courses. In BSc Computer Science 86 percent of the students could not make the cut. Not a single student in BSc Statistics passed. Second year The results for second year students are not as bad but they are still worse than last year. In BSc Computer Science only five out of 21 students passed while in BSc Information Systems only three out of nine made it. The failure rate in BSc Environmental Science is a 100 percent. In BA Economics with Minor in Statistics 52 out of 108 students failed while in the BA Sociology and Development Studies class of 37 only seven passed. The summaries also show that half of the students in BSc General failed. Third year The results for third-year students are far from good although they are better than the rest. In BSc Computer Science 70.8 of the students failed. In BA Sociology the failure rate is 43 percent, 100 percent in BA Sociology and Geography, 63 percent in Bachelor of Accounting and 60 percent in BA Public Administration and Sociology. In the wake of the shock results the Senate ordered faculties to compile reports to explain what could have happened. Lecturers who spoke to this paper laid the blame on Vice-Chancellor Professor Sharon Siverts whom they accuse of failing to hire lecturers. Others however said Sejanamane is to blame for the failure because he is in charge of academics. A lecturer in the science faculty said some of the courses were taught by part-time lecturers after Siverts allegedly refused to hire permanent staff. Some courses did not have lecturers for the better part of the semester, he said. “It takes years to get someone hired at the university. The VC keeps telling us that there is no money,” he said. “The failure rate you have seen this year is just an indication of worse things to come. Next year the situation is going to be worse.” He said lecturers in the science faculty are overwhelmed, with some of them teaching classes with 600 students. “There is no support structure because there are no tutors,” he said. Another lecturer said there was a perception that the lack of cohesion in the management had contributed to the failure rate. “It has become common knowledge that Professor Sejanamane and Professor Siverts are not seeing eye-to-eye,” he said. “They seem to be setting each other for failure. As a result of their power struggles nothing gets done at the university”. Yesterday Sejanamane said he did not want “to start pointing fingers because there are reports being prepared by the faculties”. “The university works as a team so I don’t want to be drawn into a discussion about differences between people,” Sejanamane said. Asked about allegations that her relationship with Sejanamane is frosty, Siverts said it was inappropriate to talk about personal relationships. Last week she 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.
Posted on: Thu, 04 Jul 2013 04:55:07 +0000
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