By Gladys Fred Kole
Marking of South Sudan Certificates of Secondary Education (CSE) examinations is on progress, and results will be ready in three weeks’ time.
According to the Ministry of General Education and Instruction, the marking delayed due to challenges in funding for the exercise.
Deputy Minister Martin Tako Moyi told the media on Monday that National Examination Council (NEC) received part of the funding to facilitate the examination paper marking process.
“We will do our best to mark the examinations within a limit of three weeks; within this period, we will produce the result,” Tako assured.
He underlined that because of the scarcity of money at the moment, the Finance Ministry was unable to disburse to them the full amount budgeted, but what has been given to them will be able to cover the process of marking.
“We will use it wisely, especially for keeping the teachers who are marking for their transport and feeding,” he noted. “As South Sudanese, we have to tell the candidates and the public to bear with us; it’s not only the examination council, but we face a lot of challenges these days,” he explained.
Tako explained that the reason that led to the delayed tallying of the exam results was obviously that they hadn’t received timely funding to facilitate marking the papers.
He acknowledged that the lack of marking the examinations as well as producing the results is a challenge and has interfered with the academic year.
“We are doing our best to catch up. We have a lot of adversary issues, such as COVID-19 and climate change, but we have been navigating through them. We always keep our schools afloat.” He stressed.
He urged the students, parents, and students to bear with them as they work around the clock to ensure that, in three weeks’ time, this issue will be something of the past.
Tako highlighted the tightened security during the administration of the CSE exams, which scared away some candidates.
“There were people who sat only for two subjects and ran away because they didn’t study; we tightened everything,” he said. “Previously, exams were everywhere in the market; now they’re not there.”.
According to the Deputy Minister, not all the students will repeat and not all will join the university, but for those who will repeat, there’s a chance for them at the teacher’s union centers, where they are prepared to sit for examinations, not like the new candidates.
Senior Four candidates for the academic year 2023-2024 sat their final national exams between December 4 and 14, last year.