(MENAFN- The Post)
IN our last week's issue of thepost, we reported on a story of how the Examinations Council of Lesotho (ECOL) had withheld results of six schools following the leaking of examination papers.
The leaking of the examination papers is not just a criminal matter involving teachers and school principals. It goes to the very heart of our entire school system in Lesotho.
The implications for students and the education system are therefore huge. Once the integrity of our examination system is questioned, we risk ruining the future of thousands of students who might want to further their studies outside Lesotho's borders.
Our universities and technical colleges might also end up recruiting students who do not necessarily deserve to be there. That would be disastrous.
It is precisely for these reasons that the police must get to the bottom of this embarrassing scandal. It is no small matter.
The police must channel enough resources to weed out the culprits and drag them before courts of law. Anything short of this would have serious implications for future generations.
The cost of failing to act against the culprits will be huge, in the long run.
We are shocked that teachers and some school principals were so brazen in their violation of the law when they leaked the examination papers.
They did not just allow the students to access the question papers way before the exams. But they went on and directly“coached” their students on how to answer certain questions.
At one school, we are told, students all had uniform responses to exam questions. What this scandal has proved is that the Examinations Council of Lesotho has a serious problem on its hands.
It will need to come up with a new, radical approach to stop the rot, or we will have to kiss the integrity of our exams goodbye.
Sadly, this is not the first time that we have reported about examination papers leaking in Lesotho. It has been a perennial problem that has been happening for years.
The tragedy is that the examinations authority has still not come up with a workable system to stop the leaks and effectively punish offenders. This is why we still have this problem bobbling around every year during exam times.
The big question we must all grapple with is: So what must be done?
ECOL, as the technocrats, must come up with fresh ideas to stop the rot.
Perhaps, what is happening in the education sector is a confirmation that we recruited the wrong people to manage and run our schools. We need men and women of integrity to run the system.
If any are identified as bad apples, by leaking exams, the Ministry of Education must be extremely ruthless at expelling such teachers and principals. That is because they would have sold their soul on the altar of expediency.
We need a new policy that weeds out offenders. That policy must be applied without mercy. Only when the ministry has punished offenders appropriately will we be able to see a stop to this madness.
The days of treating teachers and school principals with kid gloves should be over.
The leaking of exam papers is a criminal matter. It must be treated as such. Once the government takes the matter from that angle, then we will see a much more aggressive and serious attempt to stop the leaks.
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