The South Sudan National Examinations Council on Monday started marking the Certificate of Primary Examinations (CPE) and Certificate of Secondary Education (CSE) examination papers, general education ministry officials said at a press conference yesterday.
The 2021 CPE exams were conducted in February 2022 and the marking of the scripts was expected to commence immediately and end in March 2022. The CSE examinations were sat in April 2022 and marking for the papers was also delayed due to the delayed release of funds for the marking exercise according to the deputy minister of general education and instruction, Martin Tako Moi.
“At last we got the necessary funding for marking both examinations. We are starting marking examinations as of today (Monday),” he announced. “Fortunately, the ministry of finance has just released the resources that we need to mark the two exams. I have therefore directed the secretariat of examinations to work hard to ensure that the results are released timely.”
For his part, the undersecretary at the ministry of general education and instruction, Kuyok Abuol, said senior one students across the country will get extra lessons.
“First term is now coming to an end and by July schools are preparing examinations for the first term. When the results are out and senior ones are admitted to schools, they will miss one term,” he explained. “So, we are working with colleagues in the National Curriculum Development Center to try and condense the syllabus for senior ones and we will provide it to schools so that they can use that to teach the senior one syllabus.”
Abuol also said teachers will soon get their salary increment of 140 percent.
Meanwhile, the secretary-general of the National Examinations Council, Simon Nyok Deng, said they have lined up 500 teachers to do the marking.
“I am thankful that today we are beginning the marking with all the teachers. We have assembled a team of over 500 teachers to process the results and after which we will call back the control to do the recording and that will be followed by adjudication of marks and finally vetting by the council and the results will be released,” he said. “We are also going to engage several other teachers to begin the other processes of secondary school scripts so that they also start the marking.”
He added: “The marking of the papers will take 4 to 6 weeks and we expect the results to be out in about 4-6 weeks.”
Ben Tombek Columbano, the headmaster for Supiri Secondary School in Juba said they are only registering students for senior two to senior four except senior one pupils who are repeating the class.
“We are not registering senior one, we are registering from senior two, senior three, and senior four. For the senior one that we are registering now are those who are advised to repeat from last year, but we are going to wait for the new students who are coming from basic 8,” he said.
The headmaster for Juba Day Secondary School, George Kenyi, said he was worried that leaving students who are supposed to be in senior one is detrimental to their social lives and calls for the speedy release of their results.
“Let us not leave senior ones who are coming with a lot of love for school to get demoralized and join gangs in the residential areas which are now driving our children towards criminal activities,” he warned.