Dear Editor – We wish to raise our concerns regarding the ministry of education’s decision to withhold this year the publication of student’s exam aggregates if not the full school results in the printed media.
We would like to ask the ministry particularly NESU (National Exam Standard Unit) why is it that you stop doing this this year but in the previous year’s you have just been doing that all along.
We would like to tell NESU that what you have done this year of just publishing the student’s names is meaningless and a waste of your printing expenses.
Listing student’s names means nothing to us parents and fee payers.
The cause of confidentiality that you stand on is meaningless considering that you have done this in the past.
Moreover the merits of having aggregates and full results published outweighs your reasonings of confidentiality.
The world has no longer been non- transparent anymore. It has become more transparent than ever before and being so it brings positive outcomes and a way forward in a positive perspective.
There is no reason to conceal students’ results. That is reality and we must talk about reality and embrace reality.
As parents and fee payers the results in full nationwide would help us the gauge the performance of our children in a friendly competitive manner and it makes us feel good and satisfied.
Also it would help us to see how well other students and other schools do. Students deserve their scorelines and these must be published.
Whatever the students score whether medium or less medium we would like to know also. We love our children and we will accept whatever the score results are.
In this way it will help us to find ways to send them to other schools.
Whilst NESU says results are confidential, when they are sent to education authorities full results are published in EA public notice boards, thus we see no reason to withhold results from publishing them in the printed media because already they have been made public by respective EAs.
We would like to see all results in one page so the printed media is the most convenient way.
When we want to get the results of our children attending schools of other EAs and elsewhere but we could not.
All these can be resolved fairly and equitably through the printed media by NESU publishing them.
Not only that but publishing them in public print media would also help to address and gauge performance and commitments of schools and teachers therein as well as the issue of teacher absenteeism because results will squarely point back to them.
On the other extreme, it would help the public to know which school is cheating through unbelievable results and exam supervisors not doing their work.
With all the above put forth herewith, we parents, fee payers and stakeholders concern would like to ask NESU to please kindly publish the full exam results and aggregate marks of all schools 2013.
Thanks and looking forward for kind consideration and favorable outcome from NESU.
Tysoni Ziala
Honiara
