Tonga’s Minister of Education, the Prime Minister Hon. ‘Akilisi Pohiva, faced a crisis this week in his move to discard 12 years of development in the national examination system in order to revert to an earlier simpler method called “Raw Marks”.

Educational institutions outside of Tonga recognize only Standardized Examination Marks, and the concern held by some parents and teachers is that Tonga’s Secondary Schools students will not be able to pursue further studies overseas if Tonga reverts to using Raw Marks.

On Wednesday Hon. Pohiva told a noisy meeting that Tongan schools will hand out two sets of examination results at the end of the 2015 school year – that is Raw Marks for parents and Standardized Marks for higher education institutions.

Confrontation

The move has found the Prime Minister confronting his own education administration and teachers, as those who oppose it are either being dismissed or have left work. One of them, a former CEO of Education, ‘Emeli Pouvalu earlier this week announced she would take a petition to the king urging him to replace the Education Minister Pohiva because of his plans to restructure the education system.

The PM called the press conference on October 14 aiming to clarify why he wants the Ministry of Education to go back and use only Raw Marks, instead of going ahead with the restructuring process that had been going on during the past 12 years.

Held in a classroom at the Tonga Institute of Education at Pahu, the PM found himself standing in front of a blackboard and facing a room full of media, concerned teachers, education advisors who were seated in rows of school desks in front of him. They included some heads of non-Government schools, and others who thought they were there for a meeting.

Two methods

A very concerned person questioned, “where will Tonga’s Form 7 students go for further study next year if the minister goes ahead and reverts Tonga’s exam result format from Standardized Marks to Raw Marks?”

Since Hon. Pohiva’s declaration on 19 March 2015 that Tonga would revert and use only the Raw Marks Examination system, nothing much has been done to make the transition happen, except that he has made it clear through dismissals that he will not tolerate anyone who stands in his way.

From the outset of this Press Conference it was clear that the objective was to clarify why the Minister of Education wanted the Ministry to go back and use only Raw Marks, instead of going ahead with the restructuring process that has been going on during the past 12 years whereby Tonga’s examination marks were being calculated by collaborating two examination marking systems, Raw Marks and a Standardize Marks system.

Shouting

The Minister of Education, however, admitted that he did not fully understand the Standardized Marks system. The only explanation that he could give was to say that one takes the Raw Marks from the exam papers and “cooks” them, and the cooked marks are the standardized marks.

The Prime Minister introduced his Raw Marks expert, an IT person, Piveni Piukala, to explain why using Raw Marks was the best option for Tonga. But the room didn't want to hear Piveni who was shouted at and told to sit down.

Teachers and staff of the Ministry of Education, preferred to hear what an expert, Mostyn Coleman, had to say the Raw Marks and the Standardized Marks systems.

Mostyn, an Australian, who has been in Tonga during the past four years, managing Tonga’s Interim Skills Development Service (ISDS), had played a leading role in Australia’s examination system for 20 years.

However, the Minister of Education was not very keen to allow Mostyn to take the floor; he wanted to know who he was and who had invited him into the meeting - and he suggested to get him to talk next week.

But most of the people in the room wanted to know about Raw Marks and Standardized Marks and so eventually the PM had to sit down and allow the expert to explain the difference.

Mostyn pointed out that if exam papers were perfect, no adjustment was needed and the Raw Mark was the actual mark.

“If the exam paper is perfect, Raw Marks should be the same as the Standardised Marks. In a good exam paper we don’t need standardisation. Examination setting is the most important part, and we should make allocation for bright kids,” explained Mostyn. Since not all examination papers were perfect that is why standardization was introduced.

The meeting heard that for Tonga to transfer its examination marking system from Raw Marks to Standardize Marks within eight months, as demanded by the Prime Minister was an impossible task.

Wrong decision

Finau Tutone a former teacher and a Ministry of Education official, told the PM that his decision to change from Standardize Marks to Raw Marks was wrong. “To make such a change, the curriculum has to be changed, and that will take time,” he said.

Hon. Pohiva disagreed with Finau that the curriculum had to be changed.

Finau reminded ‘him that staff were laid off, and “you should listen to your staff,” he said.

Minister of Education

Hon. Pohiva became Tonga's Minister of Education after he was elected Prime Minister before Christmas 2014.

At the beginning of the meeting, which was supposed to be a Press Conference with the Tongan Media on the examination issue, ‘Akilisi gave a brief background of his life, as a school teacher in the rural areas of Ha‘apai and Tongatapu. He related how he was sent on a government diploma scholarship to the University of the South Pacific, but he had to “fight to change it, so that he could do a Bachelor of Social Science degree.”

He returned to Tonga and worked at the Ministry of Education, but at the same time ran a radio program, which irritated the Government Ministers so much that he was dismissed from the public service in 1985 after nineteen years service.

Then following the General Election of November 2014 he was elected Prime Minister and the Minister of Education, and with pride in his eyes he said, “Now I am standing before you as Minister of Education”. The message was clearly written on his face that now he could do what the government and the ministry did not like him to do in 1985.

Meaning: Raw Scores [2]