The Mathematics exam paper for the Samoa School Leaving Certificate in 2014 that has become the subject of a heated debate was set locally and in accordance with the curriculum.
The point was raised by the Chief Executive Officer of the Ministry of Education, Sports and Culture, Matafeo Falanaipupu Aiafi, during an interview with the Samoa Observer. The C.E.O was asked about concerns that perhaps the students were given the wrong exam paper.
Matafeo denied this.
He was also asked to reveal who had set the exam paper.
“I cannot give out the names of the people due to security reasons,” he said.
“However there is one thing that I want to clarify and that is the exam is not set by one person or a ministry.
“The test is set by people like professors and lecturers from the university, teachers, senior officers and experts of Math. They are the ones who help put together the exam.”
He was also asked if perhaps the test was too hard.
“No, I don’t think it was hard because all the questions were based on the curriculum taught throughout the year,” he said.
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“That is all I can say for now. We are preparing everything to answer all the questions and the concerns of many parents.”
Mathematics Lecturer at the National University of Samoa, Dr. Karoline Afamasaga Fuatai, supported Matafeo. She said claims that the questions in the exam paper were not based on the curriculum were wrong.
“All the teachers and schools who have Year 13’s all have a copy of the Year 13 curriculum that tells them the learning outcomes that a student should reach,” Dr. Fuatai said.
“The questions in the test were based on those learning outcomes.
Each and every question that came in the test paper in Section A and B all link to the learning outcomes inside the curriculum.”
Dr. Fuatai, however, has her own suspicions as to why there was such a high failure rate.
“What might have happened is perhaps the teachers were teaching Math based on the past years’ test papers instead of covering what is in the curriculum,” she said. “If that was the case then that will be the teacher’s fault.”
Dr. Fuatai also said that Math failure is not a new thing.
“This has always been a problem,” she said. “However it was hidden behind the scaling system until now.
We are using the raw marks to rank the marks and now the truth has come out.”
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