Students complain of errors in South Sudan exam papers

April 22, 2013 (BOR) – The first South Sudan secondary examinations for 2013 have come under severe criticism from the candidates in Jonglei state who said the papers had errors in them.

On the morning of Monday 22 April, although disturbed by the arrival of heavy rain, students sat for their first three hour examination paper, on Christian Religious Education (CRE) at 9am. Almost all the exam centres in Jonglei noticed the omission of one compulsory of the six compulsory questions.

One of the chief invigilators in one of the secondary schools in Bor, Mr. Matay Babouth, also pointed out two further errors in paper: “In question two, section B, number three is blank with no statement and in question three, section B, number two seemed to have been completed, so we advised for more check up”.

In the Geography paper, sat in the afternoon on the same day, there were also errors on some the maps used.

However, the mistakes did come as a surprise to some teacjers.

“South Sudanese examiners are just learning, I did not expect such errors to be very few like this, congratulations to the our examiners in the South”, said one of the oldest head teachers, who has been in the education system for more than 50 years now.

Students of Islamic Religious Education (IRE) in Bor Secondary School were locked in a classroom until their examination papers finally arrived at 5pm and did not complete the exam until 7:30pm.

According to the few students Sudan Tribune has talked to, South Sudanese examinations are harder than the ones received under the Sudanese system before South Sudan seceded from the north of Sudan in 2011.

(ST)