BULAWAYO – The Zimbabwe Schools Examination Council (ZIMSEC) said Monday that the pass rate for the 2018 Grade 7 examinations rose to 52.08 percent, up from 44.73 last year.
Some 327,492 candidates sat for this year’s Grade 7 examinations with female students outperforming their male counterparts.
The results will be ready for collection at all the schools starting on Tuesday.
ZIMSEC board chairman Professor Eddie Mwenje said pupils had particularly excelled in the national languages, with Shona and Tonga pass rate topping 85 percent while Nambya and Kalanga saw a pass rate of 73 percent each.
Braille, for the blind, saw a 61.36 percent pass rate.
Mwenje noted that the biggest jump in pass rate was observed in the Agriculture paper, which is in its second year of being tested. The 66.96 percent pass rate was a significant leap from the 48.51 percent recorded in 2017, when the paper was first introduced as part of the new curriculum.
