A GSAT matter for urgent attention

Several parent friends of mine were complaining about the recently held GSAT. There was an issue with the mathematics paper, in that there should have been 80 test items, but at one particular school the questions came up 24 short!

The presiding officer had made the discovery and quickly informed the education ministry's regional office of the shortage. It was reported that a request was made for an education officer to intervene by supervising the reproduction of the missing questions on a copying machine, but the response was negative. The students proceeded to do the exams without the missing items.

Parents of the children who were affected made calls to investigate if other schools had similar problems. Several were identified. It was alleged in those instances that permission was granted to print or write on a board, the missing sections from one sheet that had the correct amount of items.

This had angered many parents because they were thinking of the fairness of the exams. This led me to ask the following questions:

a) Will the answers of the affected students be marked out of the original total (80) of the affected paper?

b) Will there be a resit of the mathematics paper for those schools or for the region that was affected by the question shortage?

c) Will there be a report and a question-and-answer session with the parents of the affected schools?

My suggestion to the Ministry of Education is to quickly address the matter so as not to create problems for themselves in the future. Questions of integrity, equity and professionalism can be raised and may force the powers that be to make hasty changes to the examinations or change the entire system to our detriment.

That matter of the missing questions must be properly addressed. This cannot happen again, for it has now left a bitter taste in parents' mouths.

Our children need to be psychologically settled on the matter. They are nervous and truly concerned about the fairness of the exams and wondering if their chances to transition to high school will be severely affected.

I cannot repeat the words used by both parents and children on this issue, but the picture has been painted and the image is dark and depressing. This matter needs to be addressed to dispel their fears or else they will find parents protesting against the GSAT.