Malawi National Examinations Board (Maneb) yesterday started administering Primary School Leaving Certificate of Education (PSLCE) examinations without major hitches apart from isolated incidences of delays to start the first paper.
There are 257 129 candidates, comprising 133 373 females and 123 576 males, sitting for this year’s examinations running up to Friday.
Yesterday, the candidates started with English paper in the morning before writing Social and Religious Studies in the afternoon.
Spot checks in schools in Mzuzu, Lilongwe, Mwanza, Machinga and Blantyre showed that the examinations started on time, candidates had identity (ID) cards and police officers were on site.
However, at Naotcha Primary School examination centre in Blantyre, the supervisor Maxwell Kadzipewe said they needed an additional supervisor and police officer to adequately support the 586 candidates.
“Candidates are in more than 15 classrooms and it is a challenge for me and the police officer to conduct supervision and monitoring,” he said.
In a separate interview, Maneb executive director Professor Dorothy Nampota said the only reported incidents were delays in arrival of police officers at some examination collection centres.
She said this happened in the morning at two schools in Nkhata Bay and Lilongwe Rural West, resulting in delays by 10 minutes to start the examinations.
“We prepared very well for these exams although there was a delay in delivery of identity cards to schools, but going forward, we expect the exams to continue progressing smoothly,” said Nampota.
On the concerns at Naotcha, she said Maneb will follow up on the issue since every school with over 400 candidates is supposed to have two security officers.
Last week, delayed delivery of candidates’ IDs to schools raised fears that the administration of the examinations could be compromised. However, by Monday this week, Maneb had resolved the challenges and schools had started receiving IDs.
Maneb will also administer the Junior Certificate of Education examinations from June 3 to June 12 and Malawi School Certificate of Education examinations from July 1 to July 25.
