MIXED EMOTIONS AHEAD OF GRADE VII RESULTS TODAY

NHLANGANO – There was a mixture of excitement and apprehension among pupils and their families ahead of the release of the eagerly awaited Grade VII results.

The Eswatini Primary Certificate (EPC) Examinations results are expected to be released by the Ministry of Education and Training today, and if all goes well, they will be published in the Eswatini News tomorrow.
For some schools it would also be possible for pupils to collect them later today, while other pupils would have to wait for tomorrow or for their head teachers to be available on subsequent days.

The much anticipated announcement of the outcome of EPC exams results by the ministry was confirmed by Registrar of the Exams Council of Eswatini (ECESWA) Dr Edmund Mazibuko, who said they were expecting to take the results to the ministry this morning.
Thereafter, he said it would be their official release to the public by the ministry.

In an interview with this publication yesterday, Dr Mazibuko hinted that the results for the about 27 000 pupils who sat for the exams last year have already been determined and that it was only their announcement by the ministry today that was left.

Disappointment

Following the interview with the registrar, several pupils, their families and head teachers, were contacted by this publication yesterday. While some were found sweating and expressing disappointment about going through the whole festive season without their results, most displayed excitement and curiosity ahead of the big day.

A 12-year-old boy from a school around Hluti, who preferred anonymity, said he started feeling nervous on the day it was announced that the results would be released today.

He said it had been a long wait and the fact that he had to celebrate Christmas and New Year’s Day without knowing how he fared wasn’t making things any easier.

“I must admit it was not a good holiday. I have been curious to know what happened. It is not that I am in doubt of my abilities but it is always better when you get to know about your results much earlier; waiting for a long period puts one under unnecessary pressure,” he said.

Approached from his homestead at Mashekesheni, outside Nhlangano, yesterday morning Siphelele Simelane, who sat for his EPC exams at Evelyn Baring Primary School last year, was openly confident that he had done well.

The 13-year-old, who wants to study medicine once he completes his high school, said all that he wanted was the release of his results and nothing else.
“Just tell me you have the results with you and then you will see a beaming smile on my face. I am really excited and looking forward to receiving my results. The wait has been far too long,” he said.

Stress

Normally around this time of the year, it becomes the responsibility of parents to manage the stress their children who would be waiting for their results go through, but for Siphelele’s family, it has been the direct opposite.

As stress started to eat up on his parents, Siphelele has always been there to calm their nerves by remaining confident about his expected outcome.
His father revealed that Siphelele had always been positive about the results and said the announcement that they would soon be released simply helped to ignite more excitement for his son.

This publication also caught up with a few head teachers who all said they had been inundated with calls from parents since the beginning of the week.
Evelyn Baring Primary School Head teacher Muntu Dlamini said most parents were curious to know if the results would be released before the end of the week.

“Each time the parents called I had to calm their nerves. We had a very hardworking group of pupils, so I’m expecting the outcome to be encouraging. While there are those pupils I expect to excel, the general anticipation is that the school will fare pretty well,” she said.

Expressed

The same sentiments were expressed by Franson Christian Primary School Head teacher Dr Nelisiwe Ndlela, who was also confident that the school results for last year’s group would improve.

“The parents are looking forward to the results. They have been calling me since the beginning of the week.
“I really believe we will achieve a high pass rate since we had hardworking pupils last year,” she said.

ECESWA officials were not ready to pre-empt the pass rate for the group which sat for their EPC examination last year.
However, looking back to the performance of previous years, the 2018 results showed an improvement compared to those of 2017.

This was despite that the examinations had been marred by controversy as police officers were deployed to invigilate, while papers had to be delivered from Regional Education Offices. So good were the results that a total of 211 schools attained a 100 per cent passing mark, when compared to the 193 number of schools of the previous year, in 2017.

The pass rate in 2018 was 89.72 per cent, which displayed an increase of 0.13 per cent when compared to 2017 where it stood at 89.59 per cent.
As has been a trend in recent years, females outperformed males by 1.34 per cent during the same year.

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