Minister of Education, Agnes NyaLonje, has described the administration of this year’s Primary School Leaving Certificate of Education (PSLCE) examination as successful.
NyaLonje was speaking this on Friday afternoon at Chikangawa Primary School in Mzimba district where she completed her exam monitoring trip in the Northern Region where she inspected schools in Mzuzu City, Rumphi and Mzimba districts.
She then commended the management at Malawi National Examination Board (Maneb) for what she described as professional handling of examination matters illustrated by reduction of examination cheating cases.
“My overall conclusion is that this has been a very well managed exercise. The whole examination process which includes preparation and the administration stages, has been administered extremely well and I would want to pay special tribute to the board, management and staff of Maneb.
“I want also to underline the importance of having professionals in key positions who come to work with integrity and are prepared to work for the betterment of Malawi because this was not the case sometime back,” said NyaLonje.
Minister NyaLonje further told members of the media that though a few cases of cheating were reported, the examinations were administered well with very tight security than has been the case in recent past.
She said the reduced number of people involved in cheating in this year’s PSLCE administration, only indicates that members of the general public should now be assured that the country has an examination system with tight security.
The minister also hailed Malawians for joining the fight against examination cheating by reporting suspected cases which she said has led to the arrest of some suspected individuals.
“Let me thank everyone who had a hand to this success story, thus the general public, our teachers, Malawi Defence Force, Malawi Police Service and not forgetting members of the media. This is the patriotism we need to be seeing,” she added.
An education expert Dr. Limbani Nsapato who spoke to one of the local media houses, also hailed Maneb for an exceptional administering of this year’s PSLCE examination.
However, Dr. Nsapato cautioned all relevant stakeholders in the education sector to properly coordinate with each other to avoid incidents where some candidates fail to sit for the examinations for failure to pay examination fees in time.
During the PSLCE exams, two standard 7 learners of Chinkhuti primary in Lilongwe, a student of Byzanzi Secondary school and one student of Mbalame Community Day Secondary School were arrested for writing exams for four candidates.
In Rumphi district, one candidate at Kafukule primary school was arrested by Rumphi police for being found in possession of reference material during Mathematics examination.
This year, a total of 266,639 candidates sat for the PSLCE exams and of the population, 131,941 candidates were male while 134,698 were females.
