By Bida Elly David
Specialist at the Ministry of General Education and Instruction said that Primary Examinations papers have not yet been marked due to lack of money provided by the government.
This came following the opening of schools minus completion of marking of the primary leaving exam papers resulting to pause of first year enrolment in secondary education of 2022.
Primary Leaving Examinations for the year 2021-2022 were conducted in February and as the schools opened for the year 2022, the candidates should have been expecting their first-year enrolment for the secondary education but things remained stagnant.
Speaking to the media yesterday, David Lowela Modi, the acting Director General of basic and secondary education at the ministry of General Education and Instruction said that what delayed the marking of the primary exam papers had nothing to do with beginning of classes since the teachers technically knew what to do in such scenario.
“The Primary Leaving Examinations papers for the academic year 2021-2022 were not marked up to now because the national government has not yet released an amount of money to facilitate the marking process. It is not the first time that this situation is happening. Last year, senior one learners also were enrolled late due to delays of primary eight results” he said.
Lowela pointed out that the current impeding situation has been a nationwide issue that could only be implemented through availability of money to facilitate it till their production of the results.
“I need to assure you that as soon as the government releases the money, immediately marking of the Primary Leaving Examinations papers will start and the first-year students will be enrolled. The issue is just about the money not being released otherwise by now, first years should have started classes alongside the upper secondary” he said.
In continuation, David said that government still lacked teachers in the academic sections.
“The government is still encouraging young men and women to join the teaching profession. In 2012 primary and secondary schools had qualified teachers but due to low salary, teachers started quitting their profession for better jobs. Others went for organisations, companies and businesses. From 2013 to 2022, schools have been running shortage of qualified teachers” David said.
However, David termed the education sector in South Sudan as being a low paying sector and that therefore the continuous reduction in the total number of teachers.