Stakeholder Perspectives on Strategies that can Improve Student Performance in the School-Leaving Examinations in Lesotho

Abstract

Despite the endless efforts by the Lesotho government and various stakeholders to improve student outcomes in secondary schools, particularly in the school-leaving examinations, the failure rate remains stubbornly high, resulting in high wastage rate. The study adopted a quantitative approach, using questionnaires and semi-structured interviews to gather data from 808 participants who included students, teachers, principals, school board members, school inspectors and education secretaries on the strategies that can be used to improve student performance in the school-leaving examinations. Simple descriptive statistics, mainly frequency counts and percentages are used to report the results. To improve academic performance the respondents suggested that there should be collaborative determination of teachers and students, a culture of speaking English at school, regular attendance of classes by teachers, the principal’s purposeful leadership and decisiveness in maintaining order and discipline, and student selectivity to ensure that good students are selected at entry levels. DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2013.v4n3p85