Another exam leak exposes Zimsec

At least 16 Marondera pupils have approached the High Court seeking an order overturning a decision by their school headmaster to cancel their 2017 ‘‘O'' Level Mathematics Paper 2 examination results on allegations of cheating.

Junior Mavule and 15 others - all former students of Nagle House School - have cited the Zimbabwe Schools Examination Council (Zimsec) as a respondent in the application.

Revelations of this leak come after Primary and Secondary Education minister Paul Mavima also cancelled the 2017 ‘‘O''Level English Paper 2, which the High Court ruled was not to be considered.

"On October 24, 2017, the pupils sat for their Mathematics Paper 2 examination at around 8:30 hours at the school. During the examination, ... Godfrey Muchenyu who was an invigilator recovered a sheet of paper from one of the pupils, Precious Sanyangore which had answers to the examination questions which were being written.

"When Sanyangore was interrogated by the school authorities she revealed that she had obtained the answers and solutions from Melisa Songore who was also interrogated and she produced a paper with examination answers," the court heard. The pupils, however, told the court that after finishing writing the examination, they were all summoned for questioning over the issue of cheating by the school headmaster. The pupils denied knowledge of the issue and were subjected to bodily and bag searches.

"The school headmaster called in two officials from Zimsec who made the two write reports. In the reports, the two admitted to have had access to the answers of the paper that was being written and implicated all the other pupils although there was nothing tangible that was found to link all the other pupils to the alleged examination fraud," the pupils said. After this incident, the court heard, the pupils sat for the other outstanding examinations without any incident.

However, on November 9, last year, the school headmaster only identified in court papers as A. Kurisa took all the pupils to Marondera Criminal Investigations Department in the afternoon for interrogations and they were only released at 8pm.

". . .The applicant and other pupils were charged for contravening Section 35 (a) of the Zimbabwe School Examinations Act (Chapter 25:18) to which they continued to deny the allegation.

"On the 6th of December 2017, Zimsec wrote to the headmaster of Nagle House School advising of its decision to cancel all the November 2017 examination for all the applicants on the basis of examination malpractice. All the applicants and their guardians only got to know about the cancellation of the results on January 5, 2018," the court heard.

Following the cancellation of the results, the pupils through their guardians filed an urgent chamber application, seeking to cancel Zimsec's decision and have the results released. The High Court is yet to make a determination in the matter.