Human error blamed

By Sarafina Sanerivi 14 January 2017, 12:00AM

A senior educator has blamed human error for the delay in releasing the official results of the Year 13 Samoa Senior Leaving Certificate (S.S.L.C).

The results were released earlier but had to be recalled by the Ministry of Education, Sports and Culture (M.E.S.C) on the back of complaints from parents and schools.

Repeated attempts to get an official comment from the Ministry were not successful yesterday.

But the recall affected hundreds of students whose future prospects depend on the outcome of the exams. Many of them have been anxiously awaiting the results.

 A source told the Weekend Observer that the provisional results were released at the beginning of this week. 

But the result raised eyebrows among schools due to the inconsistency in marks. It apparently excluded marks from internal assessments. In some cases where they included, the marks were incorrect.

Many disappointed parents immediately raised the issue with the schools and the Ministry. One of the many schools affected was Robert Louis Stevenson Senior School (R.L.S.S). 

A teacher at R.L.S.S who spoke to the Weekend Observer anonymously said the results angered a lot of parents who started turning up to school to find out what had happened.

 “What happened was that there was an error with the marks of the students,” the teacher said. “They (M.E.S.C) didn’t enter all the marks for the internal assessments of the students.”

When they noticed the error, they contacted the Ministry.

“But the Ministry of Education told us it was an error with the system,” the teacher said. “But it’s a human error. They tried to blame it on the system, but the mistake was that the marks for the internal assessments were different from the marks we had. 

 “It was the Ministry’s fault. Not the school’s fault. I had to go to the Ministry with the marks of the internal assessments recorded for our students to correct the results.”

The teacher said the issue was extremely frustrating.

 “The I.T. at the M.E.S.C had influenced the process of entering the marks for the students. 

“I mean they can make things easy, but at the same time, it can complicate things with just one error. Just one mistake and it can mess things up. So the error was caused by the entering of marks.”

But there is good news.

According to the teacher, the issue has now been resolved.

 “I am an educator as well, so I don’t want to criticize them (M.E.S.C). 

“At the end of the day, we are all human, we all make mistakes. No one is perfect. The only thing we didn’t like was because of our students. 

“They were really disappointed when they first saw the marks. They worked so hard all throughout the year, and they were really sad when the first result came out.”

The teacher added she was very happy that they were able to fix the problem before the registration of students at the National University of Samoa Foundation Year. 

 “With the corrected results we have now, all we can say is that our students did very well. With the new system for this National examination, I can say that our students did great. 

“And we give back all the glory to God.”

By Sarafina Sanerivi 14 January 2017, 12:00AM
Samoa Observer

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