Mozambique: Thousands sit wrong exam – AIM report | Watch

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Mozambique: Thousands sit wrong exam – AIM report | Watch

7:00 CAT | 21 Nov 2022

Screen grab: Miramar

Thousands of seventh grade primary school pupils sat the wrong social science examination earlier this week and will have to sit a new exam next Tuesday, reports Friday’s issue of the independent newssheet “Carta de Moçambique”.

At a Thursday press conference in Maputo, the spokesperson for the Education Ministry, Feliciano Mahalambe, admitted the blunder. He said the wrong exam paper was printed in Maputo city and in Nampula province. The 135,000 pupils concerned were given questions intended for the sixth grade, rather than the seventh.

“Right now, we are preparing to give a new and correct examination in the two areas where this happened”, said Mahalambe. “Investigations are under way to find out how the wrong examination was printed and who was responsible”.

Unlike secondary schools, where the exams are national, in primary schools the exam papers are printed in the provinces. “The printing is local”, said Mahalambe, “which is why there was this confusion of seventh grade pupils sitting a sixth grade paper”.

In all, 746,000 sixth grade and 602,000 seventh grade pupils sat exams, and Mahalambe said they occurred without any disruption. Despite persistent rumours of impending strikes by teachers over the new Unified Wage Scale (TSU), all the teachers who were invigilating the exams turned up for work.

There were two teachers in every examination room, and only four per cent of the pupils throughout the country missed the exams.

The Education Ministry is now preparing the end-of-year exams for the 10th and 12th grade secondary school pupils, which will be held between 28 November and 3 December. The exam papers have already been distributed and Mahalambe expected the examinations to take place in an orderly fashion.

Commenting on the exam scandal, the General Secretary of the National Teachers Union (ONP), Teodoro Muidumbe, said teachers may simply not have noticed that the wrong social science exam paper was distributed in Maputo and Nampula.

This is because the teachers supervising the exams are not authorized to read the exam papers before they have been distributed to the pupils, unless the pupils complain, which apparently did not happen.

“The envelopes containing the exam are opened in the classroom”, said Muidumbe. “When the exam begins, generally a pupil is invited to open the envelope. The teachers are not authorized to read the exam before the pupils begin”.

Watch the Miramar report.