By Pesi Fonua

Confusion over the credibility of final examination marks for Tonga’s Form 5, 6, and 7 students at the end of the 2015 school year is a matter of great concern for Tonga.

After receiving their end of the year school examination results, Tonga's Form 5, 6 and 7 students are facing the difficulties that their marks are not recognized by some higher education institutions in Tonga and overseas.

The former Chief Executive Officer for the Ministry of Education, ‘Emeli Pouvalu, said that it has been brought to her attention that there are ongoing queries from New Zealand's Massey, Waikato and Otago universities over the credibility of the Raw Marks of Tongan students who were seeking places at these universities. Previously, the normal practice was that the end of the year result were what is known as "Standardized Marks", and they have been endorsed by the South Pacific Board for Examination Assessment SPBEA.

In Tonga, at the University of the South Pacific campus, the director, Dr ‘Ana Koloto said that Tonga’s Ministry of Education had requested a reduction of the entry level marks for students from 250% to 200% for four subjects, which they had accepted.

She said that because the marks are Raw Marks, “if the student is studying for a Bachelor of Science, though she or he has 200%, but fails in chemistry, she or he has to do chemistry foundation.” She said it is the same with many students who wanted to do law, but their English marks were lower than 60%, so that meant they had to do English Foundation and pass it before they could proceed to do a law degree.

‘Ana said that Maths was a problem subject for many students this year.

Sudden shift

She said that the normal intake of students doing Foundation courses in Mathematics at the USP Tonga Campus was about 80, “but this year there are 150 students.”

‘Ana blamed the sudden increase on the sudden shift from Standardized Marks to Raw Marks. “The two systems have strengths and weaknesses, but standardization takes into account the variations in factors which could affect students' performances. It is not as simple as saying this is Standardized  Marks, and this is Raw Marks."

“The problem was the time and the process of the transition. If it was planned properly it would have been okay,” she said.

Predicable

The problem was predicted by some educators and officials of Tonga’s Ministry of Education, but was not accepted by the Prime Minister, also the Minister of Education, Hon. ‘Akilisi Pohiva, who was adamant when he announced the sudden shift from Standardized Marks to Raw Marks in March 2015.

Between March and October when students were getting ready to sit their annual final examinations nothing was done to the schools curriculum to accommodate the proposed change in the end of the year marks that the Minister was talking about.

However, on 14 October, the Minister made things even more confusing by announcing that with Form 7 students they would receive two sets of marks, "Raw Marks" for their parents and "Standardized Marks" for overseas higher education institutions.

When asked what he understood to be the difference between Standardized Marks and Raw Marks, Hon. Pohiva's response was simply that standardized marks were raw marks "that have been cooked". He stressed that raw marks were the marks that are stated on the exam papers.

The decision by the Minister of Education to introduce Raw Marks and do away with Standardized Marks was made in co-ordination with Piveni Piukala who was understood to have developed a computer software that could calculate Raw Marks, and the Prime Minister's son Siaosi Pohiva who works at the SPBEA.

The involvement of Piveni and Siaosi Pohiva and their software has raised a lot of concern.

There were speculations that some exam papers were set in alignment with what is known technically as the Solo Taxonomy while others remained with Bloom Taxonomy, the current model of education that Tonga adopted, so this raised questions of how did they go about moderating Internal Assessment of students into their final marks.

No response

Unfortunately, no one in the Ministry of Education was willing to clarify the situation, they said that only the Minister could talk about it.

An effort by the Media Council (Tonga) to organise a "Meet the Press" conference with the Prime Minister to clarify the situation relating to examination results was initially agreed to, then it was cancelled at the last minute.

The only clarification that we have received so far from the Ministry of Education on the many questions relating to examination results was from the Examination Unit. Seilose confirmed that since 2012 Tonga had the privilege to set and assess its own examination papers for Form 5, 6 and 7, and there was no need for Tonga’s examination results to be assessed and confirmed by the SPBEA.

However, according to ‘Emeli Pouvalu, the Form 7 results were still required to be assessed and confirmed by the SPBEA, “because it was a requirement by overseas higher educational institutions.”

‘Emeli said that this year because the Ministry of Education was demanding two sets of examination results, Raw Marks and Standardized Marks, and the SPBEA was willing to give only Standardized Marks, the ministry had decided to cease forwarding Form 7 examination marks to SPBEA for assessment and confirmation.

‘Emeli is convinced that Tonga’s education system at the moment remains “in a mess”.