Let us bring credibility to examination system

ExamsMake a Difference With Bea
Writing an examination is no simple matter. It is not just children who get worked up when they hear that exams are approaching. Even grown men and women are affected. The mere mention of the word examination is enough to send someone into panic mode.

This is because examinations are the gateway to many a qualification.

They are the path to going forward. For example, for one to go forward to university they must do well in their Advanced level examinations. To get one’s degree, one has to sit for an examination and pass. The same rule applies with most advancements professionally.

All those people we see today practising as lawyers, accountants and nurses had to satisfy an examiner at some point by passing the examinations they were required to sit for in order to get a certain qualification. That is how important an examination is. That is how important it is to pass it too.

Nobody writes an examination with the intention of failing it.

Everyone writes an examination so that they can pass it and move on. Those sleepless nights, studying late into the night and at times in the dark, study groups, high tuition fees plus going the extra mile for it all to work out must count for something.

For this reason people will pay for extra tutorials; people will snack on Maputi and Things while studying and literally forego anything resembling a social life. For this reason, many mothers and fathers go on a fast when their children are sitting for their O-Level examinations.

They understand that passing the examinations opens doors to many more avenues in the future. Exams are no laughing matter.

This is why the minute people finish writing or sitting for examinations, they experience a relief so palpable that some have been known to go partying just to celebrate the end of it all.

Adults even go drinking to celebrate the end of examinations.

There is such an enormous feeling of relief, which comes immediately after writing an examination that in most cases; one throws their books or modules away as soon as they finish writing an examination.

Truth be told, one cannot wait to be done with it all.

This is why it has to be traumatising for the thousands of O-Level candidates who have been asked to re-sit the Mathematics and English papers because they leaked.

I can only just imagine.

These students had already thrown all their textbooks and notebooks away. No one can blame them. Knowing Mathematics the way I do, there were so many relieved souls the day the last Maths paper was written. Only to be told now that the examination must be revisited all over again.

I have spoken to some pupils who are filled with so much dread at the prospect of going through the process all over again that they have become physically ill.

A mother was sharing a story about her boy who literally got into bed when he heard that it was official and there would be a re-write.

It is that serious. That is why I have to ask these pertinent questions. Do we know that some children actually lose weight during the examination period?

Do we also know that some actually gain weight during the examination period? The reactions differ but what they point to is stress which one will be going through. Thus, making pupils and students write the same examination twice or over and over is not advisable.

But we do understand the dilemma that the Ministry of Primary and Secondary Education found itself in after the papers leaked.

How do you go by the results of a paper that will have leaked? How do you take the results as authentic?

But there are also key questions that must be answered by the education authorities? Why are we having perennial problems with our examination processes?

At times we have the Zimbabwe Schools Examination Council (Zimsec) issuing out faulty examination papers. We remember the story about a Ndebele paper that had wrong words in it?

We remember a multiple-choice paper which did not have the right answer as one of the options. We remember results that have come with some subjects missing. We remember too exam papers which have leaked before. We even recall those which were lost on a public vehicle at some point.

Looking at all these issues, what is evident is that bungling has become the key word. What is happening with Zimsec? In fact, where is Zimsec as all these things happen? If we continue to accept this bungling, what will happen to the credibility of our examination processes and systems? Why are these papers leaking in the first place?

Surely this can be traced and the identified loopholes can be plugged.

I am sure they are known by now. But if we cover up by re-printing and subject the pupils to the torture of going through it all again, will this stop the leaking from taking place again. My heart goes out to the poor pupils who will have to re-sit an examination they thought they had done away with. The trauma is something that only someone who has to go through an examination twice can fathom.

As an adult learner, I can testify to the fact that sitting for an examination twice would definitely send me into the blankets with a painkiller. What more the young people? Plus do we know what all this bungling does to the credibility of our Zimsec exams?

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