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When will Maneb’s experiments stop?
By
Gracian Tukula - 26-03-2003 |
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There seems to be no letup in the running of the creative genius of the Malawi National Examinations Board (Maneb). Year in year out there is a novel idea aimed at achieving perfection in the administration of public examinations in the country.
This year Maneb has come up with another idea: examinations will be administered from clusters as opposed to respective schools which registered as examination centres.
The new innovation is reportedly aimed at improving logistical efficiency and, in the words of the board’s boss Matthews Matemba, is the only way Maneb can get rid of cheating.
With no full story on exactly how the two aims will be achieved, it may be too early to debate the merits of the new arrangement. But perhaps it is not early to note that at the rate the new setups are being introduced, it is tempting to believe that the board is not yet on top of the situation.
It is easy to understand why Maneb seems to be desperate to ensure that examinations are administered free from controversy but one has to question whether Maneb fully examines its previous ideas before coming up with new ones. Whether the board is not dealing with symptoms rather than the actual ailment.
Cheating involves the candidates, sometimes with the assistance of their teachers, parents, invigilators and some of the board’s own staff and Maneb needs to come up with a whollistic and pro-active approach that prevents the behaviour in the first place and such an approach might require to be given enough time to be fairly evaluated before new ideas come in.
It could well be that the experiments at Maneb never end because there is no thorough appreciation of possible problems that could emanate from them before they are tried. Like how easy it is to administer bigger groups of people when you cannot efficiently police smaller groups of people.
Previously when cheating was discovered at centres, a whole centre was disqualified. What will be the scale of disqualifications if the malpractice is discovered at the cluster?
But above all, just when will the experiments stop?
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