Africa-Press – Zambia. CONSTITUTIONAL lawyer John Sangwa State Counsel has charged that the failure rate at ZIALE exposes the institution as a scam which is not serving its purpose.
Reacting to the recently announced ZIALE bar exams results where only one student passed out of 400, Sangwa wondered if the lecturers were teaching the right material.
“This is a serious indictment on ZIALE as an institution, not on the students. When you have results like that, it’s like you are running a scam. That’s a scam now. ZIALE is a scam. Find out how much money these guys are getting from students. They pay a lot of money to go to ZIALE that even when they re-sit, they still pay. Of course it’s a multi-faceted problem, but ZIALE is the one producing those results. So ZILAE is expected to do some soul searching and come up with a solution because all those courses, people pay money. Why would you pay money when you know what the outcome will be?” he wondered.
“Now, it is the usual kind of situation that we have in Zambia where we see a problem, we start laughing about it. We shouldn’t be laughing, we should be crying. What is happening is not normal, it doesn’t happen anywhere in the world. ZILAE as an institution should not even have announced those results, they should have canceled those results and invited the students to re-sit for the exams. What they are doing is that they are basically stealing money from people, ZIALE is stealing money from people. All what it tells you is that there is something fundamentally wrong with that institution. They are now threatening people to say you have to be mad to go to ZIALE if you know there is only one person who is going to pass. Why would you enroll in a school where you know that chances of passing are almost nil? It doesn’t make sense.”
Sangwa recalled that when he was a lecturer at UNZA, the failure rate in his course created a problem, stressing that he was reprimanded. “I remember when I had 60 per cent failure rate in my course at UNZA, Senate said we cannot have these results. The dean who was there could not defend me. He tried to explain that the students are bad, and this lecturer is strict, but they said that’s why you are there as a lecturer to teach them. When you continue to have such results, it means there is something fundamentally wrong. It means lecturers are failing to teach. It’s something that requires serious interrogation. The focus should not just be the students,” Sangwa said.
“I taught at UNZA for 20 years, there is no way the senate could allow such results. There is absolutely no way. What is required now is that people need to look at this thing seriously. This problem has been going on for so long and nobody seems to care, nobody seems to address these issues. Yes, it may be an issue with students, but it could be a bigger problem with the lecturers. So in an institution like that, in a normal situation, you should have called a commission of inquiry to try and address the problem. You can’t have a situation like that.”
He said an institution that records such a failure rate is not fit to exist. All that they are doing is that they are exploiting people who are desperate and believe that once they get there, they get admitted to the bar, they will start earning a living as lawyers. So they continue to pay them. You can’t have a situation like that, it’s abnormal,” said Sangwa.
“Any academic institution that provides those kinds of results is not fit to exist, it’s not fit, it can’t because then what are you doing? Out of 400 you have one person passing, then are you really teaching? That is zero point zero something per cent pass rate. Is that normal for an institution? When you have results like that, attention should shift away from the students to the lecturers.”-News Diggers
For More News And Analysis About Zambia Follow Africa-Press
