Only few students make it to form 7 due to lack of space
ONLY 663 students of the 2,875 who sat for the Solomon Islands National Form Six Certificate exams last year are able to make it to form 7 this year.
The other 2,212 students dropped out due to lack of space.
Director of Teaching and Learning Department, where the National Examination Standard Unit comes under, Linda Wate, confirmed this after supervising Minister for Education and Human Resources, Jimson Tanaganda, endorsed the results for public release yesterday.
Supervising Permanent secretary, John Bosamata and Constance Nagi, undersecretary of National Education Services were also present during the signing off ceremony in the Ministry’s office.
Mrs Wate said from the 663 who will do form 7 this year, 471 are males and 192 females.
She said 401 students will do Form 7 Arts, of which 301 are males and 100 females.
Furthermore, Mrs Wate said 262 will do Form 7 Science – 170 are males and only 92 females.
She said this brings the pass rate to 23% – 16% for males and only 7% females.
Mrs Wate said pass rate was determined by the spaces available in Form 7 and not because students failed their exams.
“Our selection process is based on merits, higher aggregation or marks and choices where students make.
“The spaces in the secondary schools are limited and this is a priority of the ministry to deal with according to Government policy and priorities,” she said.
Mrs Wate said the Form 6 exams are now nationalised after the South Pacific Board for Educational Assessment (SPBA) left it to NESU to look after it in 2013.
She said only three subjects namely Designed Technology, Accounting and English have been marked in Fiji, while the rest were processed in Solomon Islands.
Furthermore, Mr Wate said NESU is opened for public criticism because it is a public office.
She said if there is anything wrong, then there is a way to fix it as well.
The Form 7 results were the final parents have been waiting for.
The other three exam results – Solomon Islands Secondary Entrance (SISE), Solomon Islands Year 9 (SIY9) and Solomon Islands School Certificate (SISC) – were released last week.
By EDDIE OSIFELO
