Confusion surrounds exam results in Fiji
Fiji's opposition says the education minister needs to be more clear about the country's education reforms, saying dramatic improvements in results are extraordinary and unexplained.
Transcript
Fiji's opposition says the education minister needs to be more clear about the country's education reforms, saying dramatic improvements in results are extraordinary and unexplained.
The minister, Mahendra Reddy, last week announced that every single student passed their year 13 exams, a significant increase from a 75.2 percent pass rate two years ago.
In a statement, Mr Reddy says the improvement is down to a number of reforms carried out in the past year to improve what has been poor performance in previous years.
But the leader of the National Federation Party, Biman Prasad, told Jamie Tahana that recent statements by Mr Reddy about the results have many students and teachers confused.
BIMAN PRASAD: The minister obviously has confused the students and parents in the country by first saying that the 100 percent pass rates and basically said that no student had failed. But a day later he says that wasn't the case but then again he obviously could not explain why in the first place he said that 100 percent of the students passed their exams. So it is amazing and ridiculous that the Minister for education would not be able to give a very clear assessment of what the result is. But there are obviously other issues. We moved away from the process of scaling marks and basically if you look at some of the raw marks, pass rate in 2014 and compare that with the pass rate in 2015 then the pass rates are extra ordinary. For example for chemistry the pass rate for 2014 was 10 percent, the pass rate in 2015 is 34 percent that is an increase of more than 200 percent. Biology 14 percent in 2014 and 40 percent in 2015 again more than 180 percent. These sort of increase is extraordinary but
JAMIE TAHANA: Could that just not be though that the reforms that are being done in the education sector are possibly working the investment in teachers and stuff as the UN.
BP: Well it is a result within a year and you have got to understand that one could have expected improvement but the reforms were only in terms of putting more emphasis on teaching just changing the timeline on which the syllabus should be completed. So the pass rate in terms of percentage increase is extraordinary. This raises questions and the minister has obviously not been able to explain this very carefully.
JT: What questions are they that they raise? Are you hinting at something more sinister such as the bar being lowered or something?
BP: Well I mean there was some assessment of the papers for year 13 which many considered to be much easier. So obviously I mean we are saying that first of all the minister has bungled the whole issue by first saying that there was 100 percent pass rate when in fact there is no 100 percent pass rate and he corrected that after a day but again he said no one has failed. So it is still very confusing and his claims that the reforms are paying dividends is rubbish because what is he measuring that against? What we have called for is and education commission or an expert review of what has happened in the education system over the last nine years under the Bainimarama government.
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