South Sudan's English Daily Newspaper
"We Dare where others fear"
By Simon Deng
The National Examination Council has introduced 80,000 SSP as examination fee in public primary schools in order to cater for growing logistical expenses related to administration of examination for the Certificate of Primary Education.
Simon Nyok Deng, the Secretary General for the South Sudan National Examination Council revealed that the government has come up with new funding strategy to ensure future examinations results are not delayed.
“So far, we have rolled out registration for primary school examination last week and the fees that have been approved is that in public primary schools, every candidate pays an amount of 80,000 pounds, and in private primary school, every candidate pays an amount of 120,000 South Sudan Pounds,” Deng said.
“With the strategy put in place of charging fees, this amount of money that we will be collecting will form the foundation, we will be able to cover much of the expenses and now that will be reinforced by the government’s budget,” he said.
Deng revealed that the processing of the results of both the examination of certificate of primary education and also the results of examination of Certificate of secondary education takes forty five days to complete.
“If the examinations are administered in November for primary, then the result would be released before the end of March, every year and this is on condition that the needed resources are made available,” he said.
Deng said that the government is working to make sure that future examinations are not delayed, adding that the government has over the past 12 years been timely releasing results for primary and secondary examinations.
Deng also disclosed that imposed examination fees in both public and private schools will ease the administration of the examination, adding that generated amount will be use to run examination including distributing the examination by air to remote examination centers
“Collecting money is another thing, and getting access to resources or cash is another issue, we are optimistic that this delay will not repeat itself, and we are optimistic that the issue of cash availability in the country will also be resolved,” he said.
“The council will be able to get out some money from this collection and send back to the state to help run the internal distribution of exams and a few other things during the conduct of examination,” he said
In February 2023,President Salva Kiir Mayardit, directed the Ministry of General Education and Instruction to implement free primary and secondary education in public schools across the country.
