Zimsec fiasco: exam dates out

The Standard
By Jennifer Dube
1st November 2009

IT had become common around this time of the year to see pupils moving around with old question papers, preparing for their school-leaving examinations. Some would be seen in discussion groups, gathered under trees, behind buildings and in libraries.
This is not the case this year.

Schools are still conducting normal classes, heightening fears among parents and guardians that they will have to part with extra money to cover their children’s school expenses right through December.

“Our teachers initially advised that examinations would start mid-October, but now they are saying that they are also at a loss,” said Tanaka Siso, an “O” Level student at a Harare school. On Friday the government announced November 26 and 27 as the dates “O” and “A” Level examinations will start respectively.

Representatives of teachers’ unions last week blamed the chaos on the prolonged registration process and confusion over fees.

“Registration has taken longer than necessary,” said Zimbabwe Teachers’ Association (Zimta) chief executive Sifiso Ndlovu. “We have not yet received feedback on entries and the timetable too is not yet out.”

The problems have been exacerbated by confusion over registration fees.

The Zimbabwe School Examinations Council (Zimsec) had proposed registration fees of between US$40 and US$44 a subject.

But the government revoked the fees after an outcry from parents who felt the fees were exorbitant, and recommended that the examinations body instead charges US$10 for “O” Level and US$20 for “A” Level.

Despite the new fee structure, thousands of pupils failed to beat two extended deadlines in September, prompting the Ministry of Education to leave the registration open.

The ministry also introduced a loan scheme which allows parents to register at least six subjects for their children and pay the fees over three months.

But that still did not help the situation. Although the government insists the examinations will be concluded by mid December, many parents and pupils are skeptical.

Ndlovu said: “As Zimta, our counts usually give us between 300 000 and 350 000 students registering for ‘O’ Level examinations each year but as per the last count on 25 September, we had 140 000.”

Progressive Teachers’ Union of Zimbabwe (PTUZ) national co-ordinator Oswald Madziva said the government loan scheme was poorly communicated leading to many school heads failing to properly administer it.

“This is a big scandal. As PTUZ we are seeing a trend of around 58% non-registration rate in urban schools and as high as 90% for rural schools.”

Madziva said the high fees demoralised parents and guardians and meant education is no longer a right for most poor students.

Madziva said the country was better off with new faces at the examinations body, which has in the past failed to pay creditors and markers.

“We have to get rid of the current system which does not reward competence but loyalty and patronage to a certain political party,” he said

The government, he said, should revert to the old system of starting examination preparations earlier in the year so that registration is undertaken around March as was the case in the past.

This will leave enough time for preparations, he said.

“The current scenario will see students having to write two or even three papers a day if the examinations are to be completed this year. That is stressful and heightens chances of poor results,” Madziva said.

Senator David Coltart, the Minister of Education, Sport, Art and Culture said while the concern about delays was valid, people should also look at the positive initiatives, among them the extension of the deadline.

“We also wanted to first see how many people had been registered so we could then order the final papers and do the timetables,” he said.

“But when making these arguments, people should also look at how the examinations were run last year for example.

“They were done in a shambolic fashion, with no money, antiquated machines were used and the papers were mixed. What we have done this year is to restore viability at Zimsec.”

A Zimsec official, who disputed claims by teachers’ unions that parents could not afford the fees, said all stakeholders should come together and restore viability at the institution.

“The same people who are crying foul over a $10 registration fee juice up their mobiles several times a day using recharge cards of $5 each.

“You will realise that after widespread complaints about the initial fees of $40 and $44, which were in any case similar to those, charged by Cambridge, we still lost about 40% of our candidates to Cambridge.

“You tell me, what level of hypocrisy is that?” However, the official dismissed the non-registration statistics given by the teachers’ bodies saying there was no way of determining that except by the Zimsec system.

The hassles may have been too many but Coltart has a promise: “After all this, the results will be out correctly, correlating to the expected outcome unlike what happened last year where some candidates got results for examinations they did not sit.”