O-Level pass rate is low, quality of education must be improved: Minister

Dr. Ismail Shafeeu, the Minister of Education, expressed concern over low pass-rates of O-Level students and called for urgent improvements in the Maldives’ education system.

The World Bank’s Human Capital Review report revealed that despite spending an average of 12 years in school, local students are at a risk of losing four years of education due to the poor quality of education.

During the parliamentary session held today, Ungoofaaru MP Mohamed Waheed, addressed concerns raised in the report and asked the Minister of Education Dr Ismail Shafeeu about the progress being made to resolve the issues.

In response to the question, the Minister stated that even when considering only the O-Level statistics, it is clear that the national target of a 65 percent pass rate in five subjects in O-Level exams has not been achieved.

The Minister further emphasized the importance of meeting the national targets and said that failure to do so would result in a detrimental loss in learning.

“Given the current level of education in the Maldives, we have a lot of work to do”, he said. “The number of students passing O-Level exams are low for us”.

According to the Minister, the infrastructure systems in schools are not designed to set up labs to support the development of necessary skills in students.

“I believe we have to do a lot of work to strengthen educational policy and planning”, the Minister said. “I acknowledge that we have to focus on incorporating long-term plans into the education system as well”.

The World Bank report revealed that a healthy environment could positively influence the learning potential of children born in the Maldives. With the right conditions, children could achieve up to 59.6 percent of their learning ability by the age of 18. This percentage is higher in comparison to other smaller nations such as the Maldives.