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The Zambia National Education Coalition (ZANEC) has said it is concerned with the nullification of 8,778 grades nine general certificates of education (GCE) results.
Examinations Council of Zambia (ECZ) director Michael Chilala announced on December 19, 2022, that 8,778 results for both GCE and Grade nine external examinations were nullified out of the 143,351 candidates who sat for the 2022 external examinations.
ZANEC executive director George Hamusunga said in a statement on Saturday that it was puzzling that 6.1 percent of those who sat for the examinations had their results nullified.
“This begs for serious answers from ECZ as well as school managers on how the examination systems were so porous as to allow so many candidates to be involved in malpractices,” Hamusunga said.
He said it was common knowledge that examinations are seriously invigilated by teachers and security officers in the various examination centres.
Hamusungu said how then were the pupils able to involve themselves in this malpractice?
Furthermore,he said ZANEC would like to know what criteria ECZ used to nullify the results because while it might have been possible for the candidates to have involved themselves in malpractice, nullifying so many results shows that there are serious loopholes within the examination system that allows for examination malpractices to occur.
“This creates room for doubt on the calibre of school leavers we have in Zambia as well as the standards of examinations we administer in this country,” Hamusungu said.
He said Civil Society Organizations (CSO) and stakeholders should put ECZ to task as they are the custodians of exams in Zambia.
“If we let the authorities heap the blame on the candidates only, we risk failing to address the root causes,” Hamusungu said.
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