By Yusef Taylor, @FlexDan_YT
The Ministry of Basic and Secondary Education (MoBSE) released a statement noting that two exams have been postponed to July 2022. According to the statement “the reason for this development is to allow students affected by the Casamance crisis in Foni to settle down and catch up for the lost contact hours”.
According to the infographic published by the Office of the Vice President and the National Disaster Management Agency (NDMA) at least 7,044 students have been affected by the Foni Crisis which escalated “on the 13th March, around 13:45 GMT”. According to the Government’s Rapid Assessment Report, “the Senegalese launched a military operation in the southern region of Senegal (Casamance) impacting all the Gambian border communities in Foni and the nearby districts”.
The Statement from MoBSE dated 14th April noted that “the 2022 National Assessment Test (NAT) and the Gambia Basic Education Certificate Examination (GABECE) have rescheduled to July 2022. — The Ministry will continue its consultation with the West African Examination Council (WAEC) to communicate the new dates once they are confirmed” noted the communique sent to the media.
Earlier in February 2022 the Standard Newspaper revealed MoBSE Permanent Secretary (PS) Mr Louis Mendy had informed Gambian Parliamentarians that the country owes the WAEC between US$11 and US$12 million [equivalent to D636 million]. Most importantly MoBSE PS also revealed that students were at risk of missing exams this year if 50% of the arrears were not paid.
Since then, the Ministry of Finance and Economic Affairs (MoFEA) and MoBSE have been reported in the media stating that the bottleneck has been amicably resolved with WAEC. Our reporter engaged officials at MoBSE to clarify the current status of students in Foni and if the postponement was prompted by arrears owed to WAEC.
Border Villages Most Affected
When asked to explain if students in Foni had resumed school MoBSE PS, Mr Louis Mendy explained that “students — resumed school the moment calm was restored but not at the same time. Since they were displaced due to the conflict in neighbouring Cassamance, their resumption was done at different times”.
According to PS Mr Mendy, “students in schools like Kappa which is on the borderline and were seriously affected resumed very late and some of them for safety reasons did not return on time”.
Our reporter questioned Mr Mendy to confirm if only the Foni Region is affected and that Exams are scheduled to progress in other regions. In response, he noted that “exams have not started yet. However, the Ministry is aware of the loss of contact hours in some schools in Foni and having taken note of that situation, we have extended the dates for National exams (NAT and GABECE) to July since those are within our control. Having considered the impact of the conflict in Cassamance, we believe that extending the exams to July will help those schools affected to make up for the time lost”.
To assist with mitigating some of the impacts caused by the lack of contact hours MoBSE have introduced mechanisms “to help those students affected” by providing “them additional learning tools such as SD cards and organizing remedial classes to help catch up with other students”.
This postponement will cut across the entire country and will not only affect students in the Foni region.
Are Arrears Holding Up Exams?
When our journalist reminded the MoBSE official of the arrears owed and if this had any impact on the exams being postponed PS Mendy replied to say “yes, there were issues of arrears between WAEC and Government of The Gambia but that has been resolved amicably. However, that issue is not only peculiar to The Gambia, other member countries also had similar issues except for one country. It is important to say that through the intervention of the Ministry of Finance and other stakeholders we will hold exams as planned”.
Our reporter continued to ask if the Ministry to confirm that the payments to WAEC are not causing any hold-ups at this stage.
Again, MoBSE PS Mr Mendy explained that “there is no issue of payment holding up WAEC Exams. An agreement was made among stakeholders that exams will go ahead and from that time, there have not been any other changes to that decision”.
Alimatou S Bajinka contributed to this publication.