Abstract

This was a study of improving academic pass-rate of the grade twelve from 93.6% to 96% at Saint Theresegirl’s secondary school as a case study school. The main aim was to improve pupil’s academic performance atgrade twelve level. The school is located in Northern part of Zambia in Kasama district and it is a missionschool. At the time of study it had 420 pupils with 24 teachers. The school was opened in 1966. Among themany problems that the school had, was the reduction in academic pass-rate from 100% to 93.6% which wasnoticed in the year 2010 with 2009 grade twelve academic results. The researcher noticed the low academicpass-rate. In the school mission there was need to maintain high pass-rate for the school. Secondly, duringmonitoring the school was tasked to improve the pass-rate by the Ministry of Education in 2010 through theDirector of the standards and curriculum who came to school that year. Data was collected using mixed methods of qualitative and quantitative research methods. The threeinstruments of data collection were structured interview which was administered to administrators and pupils. Afollow-up semi-structured focus group interview was administered to teachers who were heads of thedepartments. The researcher also observed some lessons being conducted. The study reviewed that, the pass-rate with the use of mathematics clinics for mathematics subject and debate for English subject contributed tothe change of the pass-rate from 93.6% to 95.7% at the case study school. However, the challenges were that,the use of trained teacher with a degree to teach science subjects proved to be a failure because the resultsdropped from 93.6% to 80% in science subject. Low percentages were noticed in pure science which waschemistry which had 72.7% and 81.8% for physics which made the researcher not to achieve but missed thetargeted 96% by 3%. This was due to the fact that the school had no science teacher with a degree but dependedon asking for a teacher with a degree from Mungwi Technical high school a neighboring school. Secondly, thefindings of the case study cannot be generalized except in a similar situation at another school. The keyrecommendations were that, the government need to train and retain more science so that the case study schoolcan have its own science teachers with a degree certificate rather than depending on asking teachers from otherschools which proved a failure. There was need to continue carrying out mathematics clinics because of itspositive results with mathematics subject. There was need for the school to continue improving the academicpass-rate with the use of debate in the English subject because of the positive results to the case study school.The school also needed awarding system to deserving pupils with a single digit in science, mathematics andEnglish subjects. Pupils also needed to work hard.