Examination Cheats Must Not Be Blamed
- Category: Education
- Date 14-11-2004
- 305 views
One day, a group of sinners ganged up against a woman, caught red-handed in the act of usione soo. When one wise man asked how many of them would not have or had never done a similar thing given the opportunity, the stones they had wanted to throw at the adulterous woman dropped freely from their hands and the crowd melted into thin air.
Irksome reports of the current Form Four examinations leakage have hit headlines in the media with several disturbing revelations. The Citizen has described the cheating candidates as “hundreds of ‘dishonest’ From 4 candidates who have been sailing through the final national exams after accessing the question paper” (“Form 4 cheats celebrate’’ The Citizen 8th November 2004). It is inconceivable how a normal candidate would have fled from the examination suppliers to be chased and forced to read the paper by their whole future would be shaped. At the slightest suspicion of an entire topic from which a single examination question might be drawn, a student will naturally rummage through the entire chapter and possibly cram the salient concepts. Let alone coming across the exact paper that might make or unmake their entire life!
The declaration by the Minister of Education and Culture Mr. Joseph Mungai that “After verification of the truth, there is no way out, the examination in Dar es Salaam will be cancelled is not pleasant either (“Form 4 exams in the balance’’ The citizen 6th November 2004). Anyone who has ever taken an examination will understand how painful, if it were nullified and one required to go through the hell of rigorous preparations to do the loathsome stuff again.
The intriguing question in this hullabaloo is, who cheated and who was actually cheated in these examinations? Did the candidates cheat or were they cheated? What about their parents, the schools, the Ministry of Education, National Examination Council of Tanzania (NECTA)? The Ministry and NECTA particularly cheated the candidates by supplying a raw deal to their clients (the candidates) and not doing everything necessary to prevent the leakage of the examinations. And if we are to apportion blame for this mess, the candidates will honestly emerge less guilty and therefore the bearers of the bigger blame should also take the bigger punishment.
A story is told of a woman in Kibaha who had sat awkwardly but ended up whipping her son for allowing his eye to stray and glance at her exposed genitalia. It is a curse! My God! It is impossible control our eyes; by the time you know that you have seen what you are forbidden to see, you have already seen it.
Those who released the examinations to the public, together with the sellers who worked to perpetrate the crime, deserve punishment. The students were mere victims of a lousy system that allowed the otherwise serious national matter to be profaned with impurity. The perpetrators therefore must not cover their guilt by crucifying the victims because the students deserved genuine examinations that would have been administrated in an atmosphere of transparency and fairness, devoid of tension or infringement of rules. The candidates missed the opportunity to be properly tested to express and prove themselves through a genuine and fair medium of academic assessment. This is a betrayal, and frustrating to know that a candidate on the next desk or at the next center is reproducing the answers they have rehearsed, even if the claim that only Geography leaked stands true.
Inevitably therefore, the “fortunate” students had to celebrate, in which case “ at one secondary school…Form 3 students were freely practicing a paper which turned out to be the next days Form 4 final paper. (The Citizen 8th November)
All this boils down to a loophole in the school assessment methods, which should necessarily be progressive so that the best student can always be, whatever the emergency. Else, how will the education authorities tell which grades the students deserve once the threat to cancel the examinations is carried through or how will they gauge the performance of any suspect?
Nevertheless, upholding the examinations as they have been is an injustice to those students who did not access the leaked papers. It is discouraging and demoralizing, causing loss of self-confidence to students in remote areas who learn of these unfortunate developments. It is a disincentive to school hard work for the poor pupils who know that as they do not have money to purchase final examinations, studying hard will not make a difference, while the rich pupils could easily shun books, confident that money will deliver the results after all.
Compare the students’ feelings in Dar es Salaam and Songea, Arusha and Karagwe, Dodoma and Kigoma. The leakage of these examinations has inflicted a serious damage not only on the institution charged with managing school examinations, but also on the candidates’ psychological and emotional equilibrium and attitudes. It therefore demands that the top authorities should evidently, immediately work hard to repair the damage.
By Venansio Ahabwe
Source: Peering Eye, Sunday Citizen