Govt owes Zimsec millions of dollars in Grade Seven examination fees

GOVERNMENT owes the Zimbabwe Schools Examination Council (Zimsec) millions of dollars in Grade Seven examination fees, a situation that has severely compromised the smooth running of the operations of the examination authority.

Measures are also being taken to plug loopholes and improve the security of examination papers to avoid leakages following the widely publicised incident in Matabeleland North where an acting headmaster lost 13 O-level examination papers resulting in the Government reprinting them at a cost of $850 000.

In an interview with the Sunday News last Friday, Education, Sport, Arts and Culture Deputy Minister, Dr Lazarus Dokora, said the ministry and Zimsec were working together to put in place measures to avoid such losses in future.

He said Zimsec should be responsible for distributing all examination papers to schools or at least to clusters of eight to 10 schools that were close to each other to avoid unnecessary loss of exam papers.

Although he could not give the specific amount of money that Zimsec is owed by the Government, Dr Dokora confirmed that it ran into several millions of dollars. He said the amount owed to Zimsec was the main reason Government could not pressure them to do the distribution of exam papers to individual schools.

"It is true that Zimsec should not just print examinations, it should also ensure that they are distributed to schools. If not to individual schools at least to clusters that are made up of eight to 10 schools that are close to each other. This I think will limit losses of examination papers but in as much as we would like them to do so they currently have no capacity because the Government owes them amounts running into several millions of dollars for services long provided," he said.

His comments come amid calls by stakeholders in the education sector for Zimsec to distribute examination papers to schools as well as assess the security situation at the various schools.

Following the loss of 13 O-level exam papers at a school in Siganda in Bubi District, Zimsec had to order a withdrawal of the examinations and redo all the 13 papers at a cost of US$850 000 that was not budgeted for.

The papers have since been dispatched to various examination centres to replace the ones that went missing while the acting headmaster of the school faces disciplinary action.

The loss of papers further exposed the laxity of security in the way examinations are administered in the country as reports of leakages are rampant in schools.