Maneb messes up special needs exams
The Malawi National Examinations Board (Maneb) faces questions on how some Primary School Leaving Certificate of Education (PSLCE) question papers for the visually impaired had so many errors that confused the special needs candidates.
The Malawi Union for the Blind (MUB) raised the questions after some visually impaired students complained to the union about mistakes in Chichewa paper and two core subjects, mathematics and English examinations.
Two weeks after PSLCE was administered, Nation on Sunday has learnt that the examinations for the three papers contained errors that disadvantaged visually impaired students, who apparently failed to answer effectively.
Maneb, however, is yet to come out clearly on what it intends to do about the situation, whose examination results for affected scholars could be jeopardised.
Nation on Sunday has established that MUB and Maneb officials were locked in a meeting on Tuesday to discuss how the examinations body would address the anomalies.
According to MUB programmes officer Latim Matenje, an expert in Braille, the mathematics paper lacked separation of numbers with a space, causing ambiguity in some questions.
He said mistakes in the Chichewa paper included instructions for candidates to answer questions from a passage, which was omitted.
Matenje said: “The students, for example, in the Chichewa paper, were instructed to read a passage and answer questions thereafter, but that passage was not provided, how were they going to attend to the questions? We wanted to hear from Maneb how they are going to address this error.”
For the English paper, Matenje said it contained repeated answers in some multiple choice questions, leading to further confusion.
But Maneb evaded questions when asked to comment on MUB’s concerns.
Maneb spokesperson Simeon Maganga, in a response to a questionnaire, confirmed holding discussions with MUB officials and as such, “the matter was water under the bridge.”
Maganga said he was not obliged to disclose what was discussed because the meeting was held in camera.
Matenje, however, said Maneb admitted to the mistakes and made an assurance to address the issue.
Matenje said: “We have not been told how they intend to address the problem, but they said candidates would not be victimised for Maneb’s errors. They said they were not going to go into specifics for security reasons,” he said.
Matenje added that Maneb officials assured them similar mistakes would not be repeated in the forthcomnig Junior Certificate of Education (JCE) and Malawi School Certificate of Education (MSCE) examinations.
