School children displaying posters at a school event – Courtesy photo.

A lawmaker has raised concern over the continued poor performance of public schools in the country’s secondary school examinations.

Speaking during the announcement of the 2025 S.4 results yesterday, Zachariah Matur, the Acting Chairperson of the Education Committee in the National Legislative Assembly, said public schools have consistently underperformed compared to private institutions.

“Hon. Minister, we would like to bring to your attention our concern over the performance of public schools. The performance of public schools is very low, and this is not encouraging for us in Parliament, especially because we have allocated funds to support them. We need to do something about this situation,” he said.

According to the results released by the Ministry of General Education and Instruction, no public school or student from a public school appeared among the top ten best-performing schools and candidates nationwide.

Matur said the trend has persisted despite government funding allocated to support public education.

“For a long time, private schools have been dominating the results. These are all our children, but we want public schools to also compete fairly and perform well. Let us work together to address this issue. Public schools must improve their performance, and that is our responsibility in Parliament,” he stated.

He called on the Ministry of General Education, teachers, school administrators, and other stakeholders to work together to improve learning outcomes in public schools.

Matur said Parliament is concerned about the situation and wants to see public schools compete more strongly with private institutions in future national examinations.