UNEB, ensure all teachers know exam guidelines

Oct 05, 2010

EDITOR: Every year towards UNEB examinations time, school administrators are inundated with requests from subject teachers to hire facilitators to assist their students in examination techniques and requirements.

EDITOR: Every year towards UNEB examinations time, school administrators are inundated with requests from subject teachers to hire facilitators to assist their students in examination techniques and requirements.

These facilitators are usually teachers who double as UNEB examiners. The result of this is that sometimes students are told to answer questions in a very different way from the one their teachers have always told them is right.

Consequently they may develop mistrust for their regular teachers, since the examiners sometimes contradict the teachers. I also think it is not good for students to be given conflicting information at such a critical time in their course.

If UNEB wants questions answered in a certain way, why doesn't it or the ministry ensure that all teachers are privy to this information by making these guidelines available to all teachers?

This could be done by publishing manuals and circulating them in all schools or making the information available in the teacher training institutions. Otherwise schools which are not lucky to have examiners on their staff will continue to lose out or have to pay heavily for 'facilitators'.

Some schools have started charging parents an exclusive fee for 'facilitators'! The regulations in the rules and regulations handbook say that area supervisors should appoint registered teachers who are preferably on the Government payroll to be chief invigilators.

In my district, the area supervisor has decided never to appoint any teacher from a private school as a chief invigilator because of course such teachers cannot be on the Government payroll! If UNEB thinks teachers in private schools cannot be trusted, why don't they leave them out of the system altogether?

I thought we in the private schools were partners with Government in the noble mission of providing education!
Richard Twebaze
Ishaka Vocational Secondary School

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