01 Dec 2015

Botswana Examinations Council (BEC) says across all the levels of PSLE, JCE and BGCSE examinations, 183 390 students have sat for examinations in 2015 compared to 121 839 last year.

Speaking at a media briefing on the 2015 national examinations update, the executive director of BEC, Professor Brian Mokopakgosi said there has been concerns on the readiness of BEC to properly process examinations, and that the nation needs to understand that the process of examinations was done simultaneously with a small staff complement.

“We have a small complement and they do get tired, but our processes are such that we can take care of possible mistakes due to tiredness,” he said.

He said the writing of examinations across the three levels has been complete.

“PSLE started on October 7 to October 14, JCE started on October 15 to November 6 and BGCSE started on October 5 and ended on November 13,” said Professor Mokopakgosi, adding that marking for PSLE started on October 26 and ended on November 8, and that what was left was releasing the results.

He further said marking for JSE started on November 30 along with BGCSE, and that it would be completed on December 15 and December 18 respectively.

“We started marking of the same levels last year and the last paper was completed on December 24 and we should not celebrate yet that we will finish on the set dates,” he said, adding that there were challenges that may force them to complete marking of the papers beyond schedule.

He said BEC was ready to process examinations and that last year they processed examinations through their new system called Malepa and were successful.

“This year we will also be using the same system and there is nothing to worry about and we are confident that it will perform satisfactorily,” he said, adding that the system has improved a lot of things among them control and accountability, accuracy and data.

Professor Mokopakgosi further said BEC was ready to release results through SMS and a toll free number when they were ready.

 

Professor Mokopakgosi said if nothing interrupts their process, the PSLE results would be release on the second week of December. Ends