MANEB Executive Director Dorothy Nampota
Concerned parties are asking the Malawi National Examinations Board (Maneb) to extend further deadline for registration and payment of 2023 Malawi School Certificate of Education (MSCE) examinations.
Among other concerned groups are the Private Schools Owners Association of Malawi (PRISAM) who says their demand is in consideration of potential candidates who may wish to sit for MSCE again after getting poor results in this year’s exams.
In an interview with Malawi24, PRISAM vice president Patricia Chisi said her association believes that extending the period from 16th to at least December month end, would help to accommodate students who sat for the recently released tests and want to retake next year.
Chisi said bearing in mind that 2022 MSCE exam results has been released last week, Maneb needed not to stick to 16th December deadline saying doing so is denying students their opportunity to repeat.
“It is really important for MANEB to extend registration process. 16th December as deadline was ok for those students who were in form 3. Parents were granted enough time to prepare. However, taking into account that MSCE exams have come out just this week, it would really be important for MANEB and the Ministry of education to consider the extension.
“There are so many factors; ranging from the economic turbulence that parents are going through. Our plea is that the extension would really assist the learners parents inclusive. The consequences of not extending are that: students will be denied a chance to repeat.
Chisi further pointed out that with the current status of mental health cases among youths, it would be detrimental for a student to stay the whole year outside school hence their demand which she said will see more youths to be in schools.
However, in her response to the concerns, MANEB spokesperson Mayamiko Chiwaya said the board will not change the 16th December deadline saying they don’t see any problem sticking to the initial deadline.
She has highlighted that MANEB is currently monitoring everything through the e-registration and e-payment systems on the same.
“At the meantime we do not have plans to extend registration and the payment period because we need to have stable and reliable registration data in our system because this data is the same data that we are going to use for the administration of 2023 examinations in the next few months,” said Chiwaya.
She further added that So far they have more than 580,000 candidates who have been registered for 2023 PSLC, JCE and MSCE and added that quiet a high percentage of them have already paid their examination fees through the e-payment platform.
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