Grade 10 students to be graded ‘internally’

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KARI TOTONA

GRADE 10 students who failed to complete their examinations because of the tsunami scare last Thursday will be graded based on their internal results.
Measurement services unit principal examination officer Greg Kapanombo told The National yesterday that there were three schools – Badihagwa High School and Don Bosco Technical School in Port Moresby and Arawa High School in the Autonomous Region of Bougainville – faced with this dilemma.
Students from these three schools had to stop writing their papers about 45 minutes early their as parents and guardians came rushing to the schools to take their children home.
School invigilators who had the power during examination time had no choice but to send them home with their parents, saying that the environment and the atmosphere in the school was not “conducive” to continue.
Mr Kapanombo said these students would not sit for the final examination paper again.
“Once it’s sat for, that’s it,” he said.
He said examinations occur only once and, in this case, the students concerned had failed to complete the MSU requirements and would now have to be assessed from their internal marks.
“There is no supplementary examination and, furthermore, the schools affected will not be marked,” he said.
However, there were procedures in place to solve this problem, likewise when a student was very sick and had been absent for a very long time, Mr Kapanombo said.
“Students’ internal assessment results will now be used to process and determine their final grading,” he said.
This is the first of its kind to happen and about 50% of the total number of 37,036 students in Grade 10 will be eligible to continue onto Grade 11, Mr Kapanombo said.
“The entry requirements into Grade 11 are four upper passes and about half the total population of current Grade 10s will continue,” he said.
But the problem now was the “availability of spaces” that would keep many students out of Grade 11, he said.
Mr Kapanombo also appealed to Bialla High School in West New Britain province and Nagum Adventist High School in East Sepik to send their internal Grade 10 data to the MSU office at Waigani so that they could process the results.
“This data information was due on July 17 but these two schools have failed to provide it and we want them to do so; if they fail to send that information, then they will have to miss out from processing the results,” Mr Kapanombo said.