That’s the talk of the town these days … there were leaks in the exam papers for Physics, Chemistry and Maths … how can Cambridge, “which never errs” have allowed that??? Everyone is going crazy about that and slandering the Mauritius Examination Syndicate (MES), Cambridge and The Ministry (& Minister) of Education has become the favorite pastime of many Mauritians!
Who’s Concerned?
Before we continue, let’s see who is affected. Is it all the 10,000 candidates or more precisely the 2,000 competing for a scholarship? Well no. Not all of them do Maths, Physics and Chemistry. So I guess that at most it’s 1000 and just for 3 papers at most! Is it reasonable to hold the exams again? Certainly not! As some students rightly pointed out, no one is going to move from C to A coz of the leaks!
La critique est aisée, mais l’art est difficile.
Instead of taking a malicious pleasure at slinging mud around, let’s try to analyze what can be done. Not much and that’s obviously why the MES and the Ministry of Education are more than happy to lie waiting for Cambridge to come up with a magical solution. They have quickly realized that they unfortunately won’t be able to please everyone.
The only possible solution lies along the path of least pain and again, everyone has his/her theories about what it is … but they cannot seem to agree!
So what now?
- Can we request Cambridge to make special papers just for us and will they agree?
We need to realize that we are in this Mauritius-Cambridge relation, we are the weaker of the two. Of course, all this bad publicity is doing nothing good to Cambridge’s image but we also need to realise that most of the fuss is about Mauritius, not about Malaysia , Australia or in the international press. You don’t agree with me: Google for Cambridge A levels exams leak. It’s hardly in the news! We are crazy about exams but sorry for you Mauritians … the rest of the world is not!
- Requesting Cambridge to hold our exams before any other country
Timezone cheating will always be there since it’s impossible to hold the same exams at exactly the same time (I’m afraid that switching to International Baccalaureat won’t help). I don’t know how Cambridge will receive that but that may be the best solution for us for the coming years. We seem to be more crazy about exams that other people around!
How to get at cheaters. Was I responsible for exams at Cambridge, as from next year, I would have hired people whose sole job would have been to spread rumors around exams time! That should teach potential cheaters a nice lesson.
Well, the main issue is the Scholarship scheme. Who’s going to get it? Most of those who want to retake the exams are those concerned with the scholarship. So let those who badly want to compete for it take one special paper for each of the incriminated subject. This should allow the Government of Mauritius to see who “really deserves it”. As for the others, let just the exams minus the “leaked” questions count! That should be enough!
By the way, in Europe, scholarships are meant for poor students who would otherwise not have been able to go to the university had they not been paid or subsidized for them!
To conclude
A witchhunt is useless here, well I know it’s good to be blaming others but i think it’s time for solutions. To the students that want to redo the exams to become “laureats”, prove your worth, this time not through bookish learning but rather by proposing worthwhile solutions.
