Teacher: Schools cheated in exams

 By YVONNE HAIP

A TOTAL of eight secondary schools in the country have been accused of cheating in the Grade 12 examinations this year.

Some schools were believed to be from Enga and National Capital District.

Even though education authorities at the Measurement Services Unit (MSU) were aware of this, no action had been taken. 

It is understood that the penalty of such an offence could result in the non-certification of students; however, this has not been the case.

A senior Grade 12 teacher in Western Highlands told The National that even though MSU said it would “deal with them”, this had never been done and students had been allowed to graduate with As and Bs.

The teacher, who requested anonymity, said the more than 800 teachers, who had taken part in marking the examination papers, had been told to sign a secrecy form pledging not to reveal anything that happened in the marking arena.

However, this teacher said it was disheartening to find that some schools could cheat to get good grades while those who had earned through merit were suffering.

The teacher added that this was frustrating because genuine teachers would not see the fruits of their teaching because of the cheating.

The teacher said the instance of schools identified of cheating in some subjects was of great concern because the same incident had happened last year, where three schools had allegedly cheated and gotten away with it, while this year, the figures had increased.

The teacher said if this was not addressed, the trend would continue and the education system in the country would deteriorate.

The teacher said the examination papers were believed to have been leaked and someone had allegedly sold the examination papers to the schools accused of cheating.

The teacher claimed that the schools were identified of cheating in certain subjects after some of the answers given were the same and written word for word to that of the exam setters.

This is not normal because while the idea and answer may be the same, they will not written word for word.

In another example, the teacher claimed some of the schools who allegedly cheated, scored 19 out 20 for the multiple choice questions, and that one mistake was the same mistake made by all the students and they all wrote the same wrong answer.

The teacher called for an immediate investigation into this as it was unfair to hard working students.

Attempts to confirm the allegations with the MSU director Greg Kapanombo were unsuccessful.