How long is a delay?
Category:
08 / 07 / 2008 | Author: dnorris
How long is a delay?
On Feb. 23rd 1991 The Times of Zambia reported that there had been a marking fiasco relating to the grade 7 exams.
Grade 7 exams were taken at the end of a primary school education and were used to determine who went on to secondary school. Not all children did so of course, so the exam results had a bearing on the future of many of the poorer Zambian children.
As a teacher at a private school in the north of the country I watched with bemused interest as the tale unfolded, because the newspaper report pointed out that the results would be delayed by a term.
I thought back to this event recently, when the company called ECS Europe, which won the contract from the National Assessment Agency also announced that the results would be delayed, but in this case they would be just one week late....or so they promised.
The trouble in Zambia started when the Ministry of Finance decided to buy a new optical scanner to replace the old IBM model that had been used to read and mark the old grade 7 papers.
They duly bought one, but because they had a large stockpile of IBM paper, they asked to have their machine modified.
The new Opscan 21 model 75 bespoke version broke down. That was when it was discovered that, as a savings exercise, the Ministry had failed to take out a maintenance agreement.
To make matters worse, the franchise holders ‘RDS Computer Systems’ who were supplying the repair kit wanted their fee in US dollars. Unfortunately, neither the Zambian Government nor the Ministry of Finance had very much foreign exchange of any sort, least of all some spare dollars.
The beleaguered Ministry promised that the exam results would be out before the end of April. Few set their hopes very high. Most expected that they would lose a whole term of schooling.
Fast forward to May 26th 1991. The Times of Zambia reporter Terence Musuku wrote a piece explaining that the grade 7 results had in fact been delayed for 2 whole terms. This was factually true, and yet the Ministry of Finance had kept a strong silence when it came to offering any kind of explanation.
The upshot was that when the pupils did reach their new schools, they had just 63 days in which to do a whole years work. It was a logistical nightmare and only after 4 years were the true ramifications felt, when those reaching the end of their secondary education found out whether they had caught up or not.
The attitude of the Ministry of Finance towards the pupils was indeed callous.
The worst that can be said of the ETS marking agency is that its whole operation has been a shambles. There is nothing new in this.
All parents have to be notified before the end of term. They probably will be, but it will be interesting to see how this unusual outcome is interpreted. There could be a lot of huffing and puffing, but the African attitude could prevail. Missing a deadline could be seen to be no big deal.
Now that would be an interesting outcome in the climate of never ending targets.
