JC EXTERNAL EXAMS TO BE SCRAPPED

MBABANE – Come 2022, the Junior Certificate (JC) external examination will be a thing of the past.

This is because the Ministry of Education and Training (MoET) will be scrapping the external examination for Form III in a piloting exercise, if what Minister Lady Mabuza revealed is anything to go by. Mabuza was interviewed after the call by the Swaziland National Association of Teachers (SNAT) that the Eswatini Primary Certificate (EPC) and the JC examinations were an unnecessary financial burden to parents. “Do we still need the EPC/JC exams for our education? Our view is: EPC and JC exams are an unnecessary financial burden to parents. The certificates are no longer relevant. The MoET should order the Examinations Council of Eswatini (ECESWA) to stop this unnecessary stress to parents and learners,” read a post in the association’s Twitter page yesterday.

Through the same platform, SNAT said it had been advising government for a while now about this. They stated that a standard assessment tool to help these learners transit to secondary school would do, crafted by experts to take into account its validity and reliability. “Absolutely not, it’s an outdated, time consuming and resource wasting method that government has to do away with immediately,” said one Twitter user when referring to the EPC and JC external examinations. Reacting to this, Mabuza said it was not an easy exercise, particularly in Grade VII, because for the external exam to be scrapped, it would have to be substituted by what is termed ‘National Assessment’, which was more costly than the external exam. In simpler terms, a national assessment is the measurement of the readiness of a pupil to transit from primary level to high school. It involves conducting reading tests where the pupils read passages and interpret informational graphics.

Mabuza said this exercise would be more costly than writing the exams and the Grade VII exam will, for now, remain. However, on the JC exam, the minister said a team was already working on it and they would compile a report, present it to the ministry and then the ministry would take it to the Cabinet for consideration. “We are looking at piloting it in 2022, but a lot has to be done between now and the time of piloting it. It involves extensive consultation and piloting it won’t deem it official, but the decision would be determined by the outcome of the pilot exercise,” she said.

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