The Zimbabwe School Examinations Council (Zimsec) has said they did not record cases of examination paper leakages for the June 2023 O and A-level examinations due to a raft of measures which were put in place to enhance the security of examinations.
In an interview, Zimsec spokesperson Nicky Dlamini said they tightened exam security following leakages that were becoming rampant.
“Although this June session was a smaller exam due to the fact that most candidates were re-sitting, there are changes and improvements which were effected to enhance examinations security and we did not record any leakages,” Dlamini said.
Among some of the measures put in place was profiling of school heads and schools handling examination papers and amending the Zimsec Act to ensure a deterrent custodial sentence is imposed on those found guilty of leaking the papers.
Zimsec released the June 2023 O and A-level results recently after the examinations were suspended in 2021 and 2022 due to the Covid-19 pandemic and were resumed this year.
Unlike the results for the larger November examination session, results for June O and A-level examinations were released at the same time.
In a statement, the Zimsec board chairperson, Professor Eddie Mwenje expressed delight that the June exams were back.
“We are delighted to have resumed the June examinations to serve our candidates who may want to proceed for further education.”
A total of 21 683 candidates registered and sat for a range of subjects from one to eight compared to the 54 685 candidates in June 2020.
The significant decrease in candidature for the June 2023 examination compared to June 2020 could be the introduction of Cala.
“This is probably because of the fact that the June 2020 examination did not have Continuous Assessment Learning Activities (Cala) while the June 2023 demanded that candidates who wanted to sit for the examination could only do so if they had a banked Cala mark. This meant that the current school candidates who were not repeaters could not register for the examinations., Prof Mwenje said. However, school candidates who were not repeaters could still register for the June examinations provided they had completed their Cala in the respective subjects at the time of registration.
Zimsec noted that 99 out of 365 candidates who sat for five or more subjects passed at least five subjects with grade C or better.
That translates to a national pass rate of 27,12 percent compared to the 17,91 percent in June 2020. In A-level, of the 256 candidates who sat the examination, 112 wrote two or more subjects and 85 obtained grade E or better. This translates to a pass rate of 67.06 percent.
