The 2010 exam fiasco continues

Editor | Monday November 22, 2010 00:00

The Minister of Education and Skills Development, Pelonomi Venson-Moitoi, has always been saying that everything around the examinations was well and fine.  This was despite the fact that bad reports were coming out of the examination centres.

There were reports that in some schools, students were made to write papers that were not scheduled while in other instances the students were put in halls where listening comprehensions were read out to them against the norm of small classrooms where they can hear properly.  Loud speakers were even used in such instances. 

Lately, there was a report about a student in Molefhi Senior Secondary School where a student was made to write a science paper that she had not registered for.  Even when the parents tried to intervene, those in authority seemed to drag their feet as if they did not see the repercussions for this poor student.  There are many other problems that we cannot enumerate here.

The truth about the status of the examinations only came after the State of the Nation address at the beginning of this month when Venson-Moitoi admitted to problems bedevilling the examinations. One wonders why it took the ministry and the Botswana Examinations Council such a long time for them to come to the table to engage with the teacher unions.  From the onset, it has always been clear that the unions were in the right because they have a court order against the ministry and BEC.

Now we hear that the BGCSE examinations could be marked in the United Kingdom.  At whose expense?  The taxpayer is paying for some individuals' incompetence and this is abuse of state resources.  We have long localised marking of some subjects.  If we are going back to the UK because we do not want to pay our teachers to mark these examinations like they have been doing in the past, then we have a problem.  It is high time people swallowed their pride and addressed this matter because at the end of the day, it is the students who suffer.  We will not be surprised if some parents take government to court over the conduct of these examinations.