Offering deprived, errant students a second chance

NATURALLY, life always gives a second chance though in different measures. The errant and less fortunate students deserve a second chance in academics in equal measure too.With the amelioration of home schooling across the world, private candidature cannot be written off. Instead, it should be fully embraced and tailored to suit the current standards and to outlive the impending hurdles.Studying out of the formal classroom and sitting for national examinations with the registered year’s cohort is not a new phenomenon. It can be traced to colonial and early post-colonial times when the majority poor Africans who would not afford school fees opted to register for exams and study from home.Several literates who are currently in the late fifties and sixties of age can attribute their success to the provision for private candidature owing to their poor family backgrounds.It is this presence of uneven ground for intelligent children who would not favourably compete with their counterparts that informed the inception of the Millennium Development goal number 2 that seeks to achieve universal primary education by the year 2015.Rwanda has slithered in tandem with the Millennium Development Goal No. 3 as it has already achieved the 9-Year-Basic Education (9YBE) program but the devil is always in the details.While several success stories can be enumerated in line with the successful implementation of 9YBE programme, the rate of transition from primary to secondary is not yet at 100%. A number of pupils still drop out before completing primary school while others do not proceed to secondary after successfully completing the approved primary school course.Dropping out of students from the system is what is known as education wastage in the education circles. The rate of education wastage varies greatly from one country to another.Teenage pregnancies and extreme poverty are often cites as some of the major causes of school drop-outs. Some children do not continue with school because of inability to meet minimal costs for uniform and writing materials. This is true in most African countries that have implemented free basic education program.When economic conditions favour those who dropped out of school in earlier ages, they opt to have home schooling and register for national examinations that they sit for with the rest of the students countrywide. Without the private candidature provision, the less fortunate and obstinate cannot get a second chance to correct past anomalies in their academic lives. Most of these are overage and can neither fit in the formal classroom with kids of their children’s ages nor endure being taught by former classmates or juniors.Some students who are expelled from schools because of indiscipline cannot be admitted in other schools but they are not barred from registering for national examinations. When they come to their senses after losing all their prime years, they opt to give academics a second stab.Some mothers who got married before age or those who got pregnant before completing school are now silently perusing through book pages after completing domestic chores.The challenges that may be facing implementation of the private candidates program should not be allowed to overshadow the gains that the program has achieved in the past.