Education experts have said the government\u2019s decision to give District Education Managers (Dems) the responsibility of buying stand-by generators in secondary schools for use during national examinations may compromise the performance of some candidates.<\/p>\n
The government recently shot down suggestions that it signs a pact with Electricity Supply Corporation of Malawi (Escom) to guarantee uninterrupted power supply during this year\u2019s practical Computer Studies examinations.<\/p>\n
During an annual review meeting held at Chichiri Secondary School in Blantyre, Director of Inspectorate Advisory Services in the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology, Raphael Agabu claimed that schools did not experience power outages in the course of administering examinations because of the agreement government had with Escom.<\/p>\n
However, Agabu said this is not the case this year, and that schools should, therefore, arrange to have standby generator or solar energy in order to save computer studies candidates from being inconvenienced by power outages.<\/p>\n
\u201cMalawi School Certificate of Examination Computer Studies practical paper requires uninterrupted power supply. In the past, we have been enjoying almost no or minimal load shedding courtesy of special agreements we had with Escom. This year there is no such arrangement and we have already notified schools to arrange for their own generators and solar power to have smooth operation of examination,\u201d Agabu said.<\/p>\n
The decision has not gone well with some Dem\u2019s who claim that most schools in the rural areas cannot manage to purchase alternative sources of power.<\/p>\n
District Education Manager for Blantyre Rural, Paul Chiphanda, said many schools will be affected by the decision.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think the other avenue was to negotiate with Escom during computer [studies] examination because the decision to have our own power supply will negatively affect us as you know most schools in rural areas cannot afford this,\u201d Chiphanda said.<\/p>\n
Another issue that was raised during the meeting involved delays by Malawi National Examinations Board (Maneb) to send notifications of results to schools when examinations are out.<\/p>\n
Maneb\u2019s Public Relations Officer, Simeon Maganga, said the supplier of the notifications faced some procurement challenges.<\/p>\n
The meeting, which was attended by police officers, District Commissioners, Maneb officials and other stakeholders, also discussed allowances and criteria used in selecting invigilators.<\/p>\n
Among other things, Dem\u2019s have been given the mandate to select invigilators.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Education experts have said the government\u2019s decision to give District Education Managers (Dems) the responsibility of buying stand-by generators in secondary schools for use during national examinations may compromise the performance of some candidates. The government recently shot down suggestions that it signs a pact with Electricity Supply Corporation of Malawi (Escom) to guarantee uninterrupted […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":32216,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-42063","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42063","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42063"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42063\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":42067,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42063\/revisions\/42067"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32216"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42063"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42063"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42063"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}