By Vincent Matandiko and Josephine Banda
The Zambia National Union of Teachers (ZNUT) in Central Province has called on the Ministry of General Education to put in place mechanisms aimed at ending examination leakages once and for all.
ZNUT Central Province Coordinator Dennis Sekeleti said the nation has incurred a huge cost of reprinting examination papers following the cancellation of examinations due to leakages.
He observed that the cost of printing new papers as well as distribution is an expensive task, hence the need to avoid such occurrences.
“It is a huge cost for the nation when exams are cancelled because papers have been leaked. The cost of printing new papers and distributing them is an extremely expensive undertaking that must be avoided at all costs,” he said.
Mr Sekeleti said the ministry needs to ensure that stringent measures are implemented to avoid a repeat of suspending national examinations in future.
He urged the committees to put in place measures to ascertain the cause of the recent examination leakage of the grade nine mathematics paper and to be alert to ensure that the other papers are not leaked.
The unionist appealed to the teaching fraternity to support steps that government would undertake to prevent examination malpractices.
Mr Sekeleti noted that prudent management of examination papers was cardinal in ensuring good standards for the nation’s education sector.
The Ministry of General Education recently suspended examinations for this calender year following leakage of some papers.
Several people among them teachers and pupils have since been arrested in the ongoing investigations.