We were prepared for MALEPA - BEC

BABOKI KAYAWE
Staff Writer | Wednesday January 9, 2013 00:00

 

The BEC executive secretary Dr Serara Moahi said at a media briefing yesterday that the delays emanated from technical glitches, specifically network issues and system bugs. Throughout the whole process, from registering candidates to entering data (marks), the system kept on timing out.

'The problems were more technical than a result of us lacking experience because we spent more than a year training people and we continue to train those dealing with the system,' she said. She added that they also appointed a team to test the application's different components.

'We set up an internal structure to provide support to users,' she said. Meanwhile, challenges of internet connectivity, computerisation and electrification of schools led to the BEC kickstarting the candidates' registration (using the MALEPA application) at senior secondary level because at this level resources proved to be available compared to the two lower levels.

The online registration faced challenges with respect to internet connectivity of examination centres as it was found that even though all the Botswana General Certificate of Secondary Education (BGSCE) centres had internet, the bandwidth that the centres operated on could not keep up with the BEC's.

As a result, Moahi said some centres could not access the system completely or the system kept timing out.The Primary School Leaving Examinations and the Junior Certificate Examinations used the Optical Reader Forms, which are computer readable to register.  According to Moahi, the BEC has drawn useful lessons from the technical errors.

'BEC has been able to resolve the challenges at each phase of the examinations, results are being produced albeit later than usual,' she said, assuring the nation that the release of the BGCSE will be within time. This year, the BEC will undertake vigorous user and stakeholder training on the system to start registration early and employ a communications strategy for public information to redress last year's challenges.

For the first time, the BEC will process all the levels of examinations in Botswana except three BGSCE subjects' whose syllabi are not yet localised. These are French, Statistics and Additional Mathematics.  Over the years, the Cambridge International Examinations (CIE) was responsible for processing the bulk of the BGSCE examinations.