By Patricia Mashiri
Parents fumed over the Minister of Primary and Secondary education Paul Mavima’s decision for all November 2017 English candidates to rewrite English paper2 examination.
The Minister made an announcement yesterday during a press conference with journalists in the capital.He said they have reached an agreement that all ZIMSEC candidates should rewrite their English paper 2 after they have realised massive cheating through social media and during the examinations.
“I would want to emphasise that this drastic decision has been arrived at after painstaking and agonising consideration. In the final the analysis the decision has been necessitated by the need to maintain and preserve the integrity of the National Examination System, “Mavima said.
A parent only identified as Chenai said they want to sue the ZIMSEC board for further explanations of what really happened with their kid’s scripts.
“As parents we need to approach the court of law because ZIMSEC owes us an explanation of want happened to our kids’ scripts. I believe there is something more which happened to them than just to say there was a massive cheating. Maybe they have misplaced them or their systems are corrupt.
“It’s pointless that they noticed there was massive cheating and they only announce re-sitting when we are now expecting the results to be out in a week’s time. Why were they quite all this while,”Chenai said.
Ritchard Murambiwa said the whole ZIMSEC board should lose their jobs because they had shown high level of unprofessionalism.
“This ZIMSEC board should get fired. They are the ones who are selling the examination papers on the streets. This is incompetence at its highest level. If they no longer want work they should just step down than playing with our minds. We are experiencing an economic meltdown in the country and we are forced to start looking for bus fares so that our children will travel to their original examination centres for the exams.
“We now regret that we should have paid for Cambridge examinations. Our children would not have been in this situation.At this time of the year we should be worried about where to find the money to pay school fees for the upper six students not to look for money for them to go their examinations centres for a rewrite,” Murambiwa said.
ZIMSEC was formed in 1995 and the board was appointed then but there have been complaints over the years. Parents always complain about the leakage of papers since ZIMSEC examinations started in 1995. They now prefer Cambridge over ZIMSEC as they are assured of its security.
In 2010 papers leaked and the students re-wrote the exam but it was fortunate enough that the students were still at school. In 2012, the English paper leaked and the candidates had to rewrite.The leakage of papers has been an on going phenomenon in the country.
The ZIMSEC services have been deteriorating over the years. Last year’s situation has been worse because the time the candidates were expecting results is the time they were asked back to their centres for a re-write.