NAMCOL secondary education programme for out-of-school learners
The Namibian College of Open Learning, a state-owned distance education college, registered 27,242 learners in its Grade 11 and 12 secondary programme in 2025, against a peak of 30,999 in 2017 and a low of 23,258 in 2022.
27,242 learners, learners enrolled in namcol secondary education programmes (nssco and nsscas), 2025. 30,999 learners, same count at its peak year, 2017. Namibian College of Open Learning (NAMCOL), Statistical Digest 2024/25, section 2 Learner enrolment, Figures 1 to 3, retrieved 2026-10-02.
The move, and what it needed
The state set up a distance-learning college that lets anyone who left school without the senior secondary certificate register for individual subjects, study from printed and online materials and attend weekend tutorials at centres across the regions, then sit the national examinations.
Preconditions
- A national examination that any registered candidate can sit regardless of age
- A network of tutorial centres in schools used after hours
- Public subsidy keeping per-subject fees low
Limits: NAMCOL reports on itself. The numbers are read off charts in a PDF laid out as two-page spreads: the 2025 total and the 2010 to 2025 trend (Figure 3) are on PDF page 15 (printed pages 28 to 29). The digest publishes no age profile, so the record cannot show how many learners are adults rather than young people repeating Grade 11 or 12 after leaving school; NAMCOL's secondary programme is a second-chance route and many of its learners are in their late teens and early twenties, so this is the weak point of the record for an adult learning indicator. Learners take an average of about two subjects, part-time, so a registration is not full-time study. The digest attributes the 2018 to 2022 fall, sharpest in 2022 at 17.7 percent, to curriculum changes, and enrolment has risen each year since; 2025 is still 12 percent below the 2017 peak, which is why the peak is carried but the status is operating, not eroded. TVET enrolment at NAMCOL is small (327 in 2025) and is not included. The 1998 start is the year the digest's foreword dates the publication series from; NAMCOL was created by an Act of 1997.