By Ephraim Modi D.S
The South Sudan National Examination Council has announced at a news conference, Monday that the marking of the examination papers for Certificate of Primary Education (CPE) and Certificate of Secondary Education (CSE) for academic year 2020/2021 had commenced yesterday (Monday).
The planned marking of the exams papers was long overdue since the students sat the papers almost two months ago, delaying their enrollment to the next level especially the primary 8 candidate who would have enrolled for their first year at secondary school.
However speaking to media at the Ministry of General Education on Monday, the Deputy Minister of General Education and Instruction Martin Tako Moyi told journalists that the marking of the exams papers of Primary and Secondary Schools for 2020/2021 academic year.
“We are officially declaring to the public that we are starting to mark the examinations as from today,” Tako announced to the media, Monday.
“We got the funds necessary for marking the examinations papers,” he underscored.
He said they are concerned about the delay in the process of making the papers promising that they will work tirelessly to ensure everything runs smoothly.
The Deputy Minister blamed the delay in marking the exams papers is due to lack of funds to manage the process.
Minister Moyi underlined that the first-year students will have to remain behind to cover the other syllabus when the upper classes will be going home for holidays.
“We will have extra lessons for the students who will be in the first year, normally when the senior classes are to go for exams, the junior classes go for holidays but this time we will have the first year in the secondary schools remaining parallel to the people who will be sitting secondary schools examination next year. So that they can complete the syllabus,” he stated.
He acknowledged that they are aware of some private schools that are registering students already to senior one and that they have taken action and have closed one school that had registered first year students.
The Deputy Minister further warned those schools who are practicing criminality of such circumstance.
Moyi applauded the President, Vice President for Services Cluster, and the Ministry of Finance and Planning for providing the funds for marking the examinations. He also commended Members of National Legislative Assembly and the Council of states for the supporting the education sector.
Meanwhile the Secretary General at the National Examinations Councils Simon Nyok Deng said there will be a team of five hundred teachers who will be in Juba for two weeks to process the marking of the papers.
Nyok said the marking process will take about nine stages which may take four to six weeks to announce the final results of the national exams to the general public.