South Sudan’s Ministry for General Education and Instruction on Monday announced that the National Examination Council will commence marking of South Sudan Certificate of Secondary Education (CSE) examination scripts, four months after the conclusion of the examination.

Nearly 45,000 students across the country sat the examination in December last year.

Recently, netizens raised complaints on social media platforms about the fate of the students who sat for the exams and are still waiting for their results.

Addressing a press conference in Juba, Martin Tako Mayi, the Deputy Minister for General Education and Instruction, admitted delays in marking of the scripts which he blamed on a lack of funds.

“The marking of secondary school certificate has been delayed and the reason for delay is obvious that we did not receive the necessary funding for marking the examination. We were ready and invited the teachers from the ten states and three administrative areas and they were here for the last two months but we could not proceed with the marking because of lack of funding,” he explained. “We have received part of the funding for marking the examination and we are grateful to the president, the vice president for the service cluster, and the minister of finance for trying their level best to see to it that the examination papers are marked.”

“Indeed, lack of marking the examination as well as releasing the results is a challenge and it has interfered with our academic year,” Deputy Minister Tako added.

He reassured the nation that the marking of the examination scripts would be completed and results released within three weeks.

Tako also revealed that the first term holidays for the learners will only be one week as there will be a lot of activities that will be coming in due course of the year including the elections.

“We will do our best to mark the examination within a limit of three weeks and we will produce the results because we have been alert and ready just waiting for the funding,” he stressed. “We will also declare to all the schools in South Sudan that the holidays for the first term will only be a week so that the schools can catch up with learning because we have a lot of programs ahead of us which may interfere with our normal academic functions this year.”

Tako added: “We also have the elections in December so we have a crass program so that the syllabus can be finished within the academic year.”

The deputy minister also said they have arrested a school administrator in Juba for continuing to teach after the government announced the closure of schools due to the heatwaves a few weeks ago.

“I want to inform the public, the parents that they should take proper care of their children. When we announce that we are closing schools for a particular issue which is dangerous for the children, they should adhere to this,” he stated. “We arrested a headmaster of a school. We could have closed the school but for the sake of our children learning in that school, we arrested the administration for failing to adhere to the closing of the school because they continued which could have endangered the lives of the children.”