Your ViewTakeaway exams [Archives:2008/1129/Community]

By: Abdullah Fisal Al-Shamiry
New graduate, Sana'a University
Faculty of Languages, Translation Dept.
Every month, there will be a fixed topic on which we would like to encourage Yemen Times readers to participate in. It could be an article, a short story, a poem, or even a picture. The person with the best contribution will receive a Yemen Times cap, T-Shirt or Mug. Send your contributions under the title of YOUR VIEW to: [email protected]

This month view is about exam system in schools and universities: Good or bad?

I want to talk about the exam system in Yemeni schools and universities. The system is bad at some schools and universities, but good at others.

The bad involves most schools during high school ministerial exams. I've heard stories about one village school where a high school exam was conducted.

Approximately 15 minutes after students receive their exams, one of them throws his paper out of the classroom window where another friend receives it and immediately goes to a teacher to answer the questions. He then returns the answers to the students via someone claiming to bring sandwiches and drinks into the exam hall.

Every morning, a committee comes to the village from the city. After 15 minutes, the students ask, “Where's the answer committee?” referring to the exam brokers who answer their questions.

Everyone in the exam hall prepares and there's a representative in every exam hall to collect the money to be given to the exam monitor to allow them to cheat.

Some students use SMS inside the exam hall to ask about some questions by contacting their friends nearby in the exam.

The following are some incidents from this same high school:

1- Some exam brokers stand outside exam halls waiting for students to buy qat for them.

2- Students enter the classroom and open their answer booklets, awaiting the answers from outside.

3- Brokers sit in a nearby house with a computer to copy the exam and the cheated answers.

4- An exam committee chairman purchased a new cell phone, bought with money collected from students, but then he didn't know how to use it. When the mobile rang, he answered, “Hello?” without pressing the OK button.
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