By William Madouk
After a prolonged delay, marking of Certificate of Primary Education (CPE) examination papers, at last kicks off.
According to Secretary-General of the National Examination Council, Simon Nyok Deng said that CPE results which were expected before the beginning of academic year, delayed due to financial shortage.
“It is very unfortunate to report that examination secretariat has not been able to get the needed resource to begin the marking of exams,” he added.
The Secretary-General of the National Examination Council, regrets that successful candidates would have joined secondary education at the beginning of the academic year.
“By this time, we should have processed and announced the results especially the result for CPE and the successful candidate should have joined senior one when schools officially opened on February 3, 2025,” he explained.
However, Nyok disclosed that marking begins today, after securing some financial support from the Ministry of Finance.
“Nevertheless, the secretariat examination just today have received some funding from the ministry of finance to began the marking of 2024 CPE that either tomorrow the secretariat and all the selected teachers will begin to engage in processing examination results,” he announced.
He stated that they have got 2 billion South Sudanese Pounds (SSP) out of the required SSP7 billion.
“They [ministry of finance (MoF)] have advance to us SSP 2 billion and we needed SSP 7 billion to complete the marking of the two exams, so we still have of amount outstanding that with need from Mop,” he revealed.
Nearly 69,573 candidates sat for Primary Eight exams in 551 examination centres in 1,665 schools across the country in November 2024.
He requests candidates and parents to be patient while the papers are being prepared for marking.
“I therefore take this opportunity to appeal to candidates, their parents, and all stakeholders to bear with us as we engage the teachers in the processing of the examination results,” he said.
Nyok indicated that paper marking takes four to five weeks, stating that since there is a delay, significant resources will be required to motivate the staff in order to work faster.