By Bida Elly David
Director General of the Central Equatoria State Ministry of General Education and Instructions has called for selection of professional teachers to undertake examination marking.
Luate William Alex said this during the official announcement of the Central Equatoria State 2024–2025 academic year calendar.
“Previously, before I came, I heard sometimes university students had been co-opted. Marking is not easy as well,” he said.
The director said marking examinations requires technical skills from professionals in the field of teaching.
“If we are to mark it clearly, we have to mark it based on the contents and coverage as well as the measure of the questions,” Luate said.
The state education director stated that hiring university students to mark examination papers will risk the production of results despite using the marking guide.
“If a university student is co-opted to do the marking, there will be an oversight; of course, there is supposed to be a marking guide to help markers do that, which is what we intend to accord,” he added.
For this reason, the Director General emphasized that this time they were cautious about recruiting markers to do professional work.
Luate added that they are experiencing good speed in marking the current primary examination papers because the markers are real professional teachers.
“We have more than 500–600 teachers who are doing the marking, and this time around we pressed very hard that professional teachers do the marking,” he noted.
Meanwhile, the director general of examinations for the ministry, Loro Nyigilo Luala, disclosed that they are soon finishing marking the certificate of primary education examination.
“We started marking the primary eight examination papers on the 8th of January and are still going on. We divided the marking of the subjects into two groups, comprising A and B,” he explained.
The examination director said the first group of markers has finished marking their papers within one week, and the second group is soon commencing.
“Group two is going to start marking, and they will also take one week, and the papers will go back to the control team to deal with the remaining work,” he said.
That means one week after now, there is a possibility of them finishing the marking for the results to be complied with and then later announced.
On his part, Angelo Paulino, the deputy examination director, said the invitation of states to participate in examination marking is done by the national ministry.
“Examination in South Sudan, both primary and secondary, is under the national examination council, not the States,” he clarified.
He added that the State Ministry of General Education and the National Examination Council (NEC) play different roles altogether.
“The state examination council only plays the duty to run the examinations, while the NEC is the body responsible for setting exams and its marking process,” he added.
Paulino emphasized that the national examination council is supposed to request markers from the state to undertake marking, not hiring university students.
“This is because the state is the one responsible for the schools and knows how to select their teachers,” he stated.
Moreover, Paulino echoed that Central Equatoria did not send teachers to mark the secondary certificate of education examination, saying they never received an invitation letter.
“We did not know where the National Examination Council gets their teachers from to mark the secondary examination papers,” he wondered.
Meanwhile, Cirisio Zakaria, the state minister of education, noted that their role is to ensure that learners receive quality education.
He announced that schools in his state would commence on February 5, urging parents to prepare their children.
He also warned private schools against operating out of the academic year calendar of the Country.