Maintaining and Comparing Standards of Academic Performance of Learners in an integrated Namibian Senior Secondary School System.

Abstract

Similar to former British colonies, especially in the Southern Africa Development Community (SADC) region of Southern Africa, Namibia inherited an educational system which was very much fragmented on racial and ethnic lines. One major education reform implemented soon after independence and consistent with the constitution and education policy directives, was that all schools were to be desegregated or integrated and were opened to all learners under a unified educational system. One of the goals to be achieved was equity in the distribution of educational resources and services which would result in better performance of learners previously denied enrollment into white schools which have had excellent infrastructures in both human find physical resources to support quality education. One of the concerns of the white principals, teachers, and parents was that the racial integration of schools would bring about lowering of academic standards enjoyed by the white learners before independence. This study compared and discussed academic performance of white and non-white learners, in the current integrated, school system and how educational standards were being maintained since integrated schools wrote their first examinations two years after the policy of integration in Namibian schools was implemented.