Ammon News - AMMAN - The Ministry of Education on Thursday said all questions in the Tawjihi (General Secondary School Certificate) examinations were from the ministry's curriculum and “solvable”.

The remarks followed a meeting on Thursday between mathematicians and the ministry's examinations committee regarding the scientific stream mathematics exam, which included a "controversial" question that prompted protests from students, parents and experts.

Students and teachers complained that the exam included an invalid question which they claim that no one could answer.

Ahmad Salameh was among the many students who could not solve the problem.

"Even my teachers said the question had no answer and was definitely wrong," Salameh said.

The ministry said the question was solvable and from the curriculum, noting that only the highest-achieving students could answer it.

"Mathematicians met with the minister and the maths examination committee to discuss and study the question and they found it to be valid," the ministry's spokesperson, Ayman Barakat, told The Jordan Times on Thursday.

He said a sample of 1,000 maths papers were chosen arbitrarily to be graded, and 7 per cent of the sample answered the question correctly.

"This is the only way we can distinguish excelling students," Barakat said, adding that the ministry takes into consideration students' various abilities when designing the exams.

Scientific stream students said that the physics exam also included an "impossible" question, which the ministry attributed to a printing error, saying the problem was corrected and explained to all students in the first 10 minutes of the exam by centre managers across the Kingdom.

Regarding the Arabic language exam, which also included a "controversial" question, the ministry has decided to award three points to each student who answered the question, whether the answer is right or wrong.

Yesterday, Tawjihi students from all disciplines sat for the English language exam and differed on how they felt about it.

"The exam was not difficult but it required more time," said Mustafa Sharbini.

But Ahmad Lutfi said it was difficult and long, while the questions were "unclear".

"I studied the curriculum at school and at an educational centre; I also took private lessons at home… all efforts gone for nothing," he remarked.

The winter session Tawjihi exams for 140,630 students from the academic and vocational streams began on December 28 and will conclude on Saturday. Barakat expects the results to be announced by the first week of February.

He said 750 violations had been detected in the Kingdom's exam centres since the beginning of the exams, including five cases of impersonation, noting that the current session witnessed fewer violations than previous sessions.



By Wafa Samara/ Jordan Times

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