Lawyers bid to stop O’ Level exam resit

via Lawyers bid to stop O’ Level exam resit 20/11/2014

THE Zimbabwe Women Lawyers Association (ZWLA) has filed an application at the High Court seeking to block the resitting of the 2014 Ordinary Level Mathematics and English examinations saying the “blanket and indiscriminate” order was unconstitutional.

The Education Ministry and the Zimbabwe Schools and Examinations Council (Zimsec) cancelled and ordered a re-sitting of the two examinations after it emerged exam papers had been leaked at Whata Government Secondary School in Lower Gweru.

But in her founding affidavit which sites education minister Lazarus Dokora and Zimsec as first and second respondents, ZWLA national director, Chiedza Simbo, said the decision “poses a threat to the constitutional fundamental human rights of children”.

The move was also “contrary to the lawful, prompt, efficient, reasonable, proportionate, substantively and procedurally fair administrative conduct envisaged by … the Constitution.”

In addition, affected children and their parents were not properly advised of the decision with “notification of the purported examination cancellation on the re-sitting” only announced in media reports.

“(This) does not, in my view constitute, or by any stretch of imagination satisfy the right to be given promptly and in writing the reasons for the conduct. Very few children and their parents have access to newspapers, radio, more-so the internet especially those in remote rural areas,” she argued.

ZWLA met with the education minister and Zimsec officials and urged them to “revoke the indiscriminate cancellation and reconvention of the said examination and instead quarantine it to the affected areas”.

The advice was rejected with Zimsec and the minister “adamant to proceed” with the cancellation and resitting of the exams.

In its application, ZWLA urges the High Court to interdict the “wholesale and indiscriminate cancellation and reconvention of the Mathematics and English Examination”.

“I implore the Honourable Court to instead order the (Zimsec and the education minister) to cancel only those examinations where papers were leaked and cause re-writing only there.

“I pray as well that the Honourable Court orders that the respondents take measures to safeguard the human rights of children in these and subsequent examinations as prayed for,” said Simbo.