Error claims in Gr 8 exam papers

THE Grade 8 examination papers for this year have not been examined properly by those who designed them, according to an “eagle-eyed” teacher.
Yana Benz, a Grade 8 teacher at Timini Primary School in Mumeng, Morobe, said   he  found, last Tuesday, spelling and grammatical errors in the English language paper;2 and the Mathematics answer sheet.
Benz, who has been teaching Grade 8 for seven years, also said there were similar errors in last year’s exam papers.
He said the answer sheet for the mathematics paper the students sat for on Wednesday, had, on page 1, space for the students’ name and their school, but did not have space for province name.
He said the second mistake was on the same page, where questions 1 to 25 were squeezed in with the introductory notes which, according to Benz, “were quite untidy an not professionally laid out”.
The mathematics answer sheet Benz showed had the multiple choice answers incorrect for A, B, C or D in questions 12 and 21.
In question 38, the word “buy” meaning purchase, had the word “by” in the sentence, instead.
Benz also pointed out problem 46, which was the extended response.
“There were five questions but there were only three square grid boxes printed,” he said
He said students had to find space at the bottom of the page to squeeze in answers to questions 4 and 5.
“These may seem small but it means a lot and can pose devastating results for the students,” Benz said.
“Students wasted precious exam time on such questions and ended up getting wrong answers because the answers provided, especially for multiple choices, were wrong to start off with,” he said.
“The Measurement Services Unit of the Department of Education or whoever designs the questions should shape up and do things right because we cannot go on having mistakes in final exam papers,” Benz said. 
He said instead of students failing exams, “someone else failed it for them”.
“Having workers  within the education hierarchy in the country overlooking mistakes makes one wonder how they acquired the jobs in the first place.”