As schools prepare for their external exams ...

Sir,

It is yet another year and schools are busy preparing for this year’s JC and SGCSE examinations. I therefore think it is the right time to voice my concern.

Honestly, our results are a joke but year in and year out, we are made to celebrate these jokes; over 75 per cent merits recorded by some good school, 100 per cent aggregate for individuals. This is because either nobody saw anything wrong with it or some who saw it looked the other way.
We once recorded a top pupil who recorded a 100 per cent aggregate, including English. The pupil who speaks English as a second language was so ‘good’ that he/she dotted all her i’ and crossed all her t’s. 

His/her mechanical accuracy was faultless, organisation perfect, content, exhaustive and expression better than those who speak the Queen’s language as a first language. This student might have also scored 100 per cent in the compositions she/he wrote.

After the ‘Waya Waya’ strike, I remember I told a group of professional colleagues that despite the long absence from school and the loss of valuable teaching and learning time we would still get schools producing more merits than 1st and 2nd class passes. My argument was that the ‘miracle teachers’ were still very much around to ‘make things happen’ (Nedbank should forgive me). My colleagues nearly squeezed the life out of me for ‘insisting on the practically impossible’. But how rightly I was proved. Miracle teachers indeed working miracles in miraculous and untouchable schools. 

What should be a big eye opener is that some of these miracle pupils usually perform more ‘miracles’ when they are floored by 2nd class pupils from other ‘bad’ schools when they meet on a level academic ring. This is not an exaggeration.

Free

It is not all criminals who are behind bars. Some, if not more than those behind bars are free, enjoying their lives and sharing the free gift of air provided by the righteous God. This also goes for the so called performing schools that perform their acts so well that they are not caught. The incident in a school where a wrong parcel of question papers was opened and a question paper ‘flew’ out without notice should be an eye opener to the Examinations Council.

The question that begs for an answer is; how many wrong parcels are opened days or weeks before examinations begin?  Your guess will be as good as, if not better than mine.
Oh, poor memory! I seem to have forgotten about the biology teacher caught red-handed discussing the paper prior to the exams. But do you blame him or her? Blame the Examinations Council that subjects these vulnerable teachers to temptation in present-day Swaziland where examination results, whether genuine or not, have become very competitive among schools and have also become the yardstick for measuring which schools are good and which are bad. What can we say about one of the untouchable and ‘very good’ schools whose cup was full after many years of so called outstanding performance fraught with such disgraceful practices.

Credibility

If nothing is done, and done fast, about this unfortunate trend, the credibility of the products of our university will be compromised and perhaps UNISWA will start producing mechanical engineers who cannot fix a carburettor.
Honestly our results, to put it mildly, are outrageously dishonest. And we are being blinded by the dust that is progressively being thrown into our eyes by these results. I pray that we are not all going to be permanently blinded by these results.

Whenever the minister announces the rights of best performing pupils he should bear in mind that it is not a true reflection of what goes on, on the ground. Further, is it not an infringement on the rights of candidates when results that are supposed to be confidential between them and the examination body are released for public consumption?

Concerned citizen

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