Technical Education, Vocational and Entrepreneurship Training in Zambia (TEVETA) says the poor performance by students at Evelyn Hone College was caused by an oversight by the institutions management, among other issues.

Last week police arrested over 300 students who marched to TEVETA to protest against their poor examination results.

But TEVETA acting Manager of Corporate Affairs and Communication Clive Siachiyako told News Diggers in an interview that Evelyn Hone delayed in the submission of the students’ Continuous Assessment (CA) exams.

“There are too many problems that we had with those results. Exams are in two parts namely the continuous assessments, also known as CAs and the exam which set by TEVETA. So, the CA is done by the college meaning they give them assignments which contribute. The total mark for the CA is 40% then the exam is 60%. So, the problem was that there was a group that did not sit for their exam in 2016 because they had no fees,” Siachiyako explained.

“So Evelyn Hone submitted their names to TEVETA in 2017. So when they did that we gave them an exam and so their CA was not submitted to us. That was an oversight on the part of the college. Because there were given a deadline to submit the CA and they didn’t. At the time of marking we discovered that their CA was not there. When we asked the college they submitted something to us but then there were errors in those CA’s like 2 students with the same exam numbers. Or even 4. So our system can’t accept that, it needs each student to have a unique number. So we sent it back to correct that mistake. So, that process took long. By the time Evelyn Hone realised that this mistake was still not corrected, the results were already out.”

Siachiyako also said some student failed because they did not write enough CAs.

“There was also another group which went for industrial attachments in radiography. They lost the chain. They did not do the required number of assignments for their CA’s. So, when Evelyn Hone submitted their CA, they did not explain to us that these [radiography students] were on attachments and did a less number of tasks towards the CA. So, that also affected their results. When we notified them that’s when they started correcting those errors. At the point when Evelyn Hone came and we sat down to discuss this matter, the results were already out,” he narrated.

“When we corrected, some students passed as some equally failed because they had failed one or two subjects. Now because of this miscommunication on the part of the institution and probably even us. We didn’t tell them that this correction that was made does not mean that we would have 100% pass mark because it has never happened. But the students wanted everybody to pass after their CA was added. But that can’t happen. So, that did not sit well with them.”

He urged Evelyn Hone management to resolve the matter as it was administrative in nature.

“There are some things that are more administrative to this matter. Evelyn Hone is supposed to do something we call a teaching file where the principal or the head of section checks the teaching file and verifies the CA that lectures are administering. Are they meeting the standards stipulated in the syllabus. TEVETA is just an examination body. That role is for the college administrators in each and every institution. So this problem had an impact on TEVETA run examinations,” said Siachiyako.