Candidates at Juba Technical Secondary school sitting for South Sudan Certificate of Secondary Education exams - Credit: Charles Wote/Eye Radio | April 20, 2022

The 2021 South Sudan Certificate of Secondary Education (SSCSE) has officially begun, with over 30,000 candidates in 340 Secondary schools countrywide.

Out of the 32,167 candidates, there are only 10,368 female and 21,799 male.

The bell was rang this morning at Juba Technical Secondary school by the Vice President for Service Cluster Hussein Abdelbagi.

The candidates started the exams with Commerce paper this morning followed by Chemistry in the afternoon.

Simon Nyok, the Secretary General of the National Examinations Council says all the examination papers have reached all the stations across the country.

“Nationwide, we have 340 Secondary schools that have presented candidates for this year’s exams. So far as we have just started, the exams have now reached all corners of the country,” the Secretary of the National Examination Council said.

“We are thankful for the support of our government by availing all the resources that we needed and we were able to move. There were some challenges of course where we had landing issues with some air fields but we finally made it before the exams could start.

“All the exams have reached all the stations across the ten states and three administrative areas and we expect these candidates to sit for their exams now.

“We have deployed a huge number of national security officers across the nation to ensure maximum security of the exams and the candidates themselves.”

Mr. Simon Nyok went on to say they have tightened security to ensure that the examinations are not leaked.

“This year, we have diverse way and means to ensure secure conduct of this exams, we have deploy to every storage station officers of national security, the security have been beefed up across the country to ensure maximum security of exams,” Nyok said.

“So far, we have not received any issue, all our officers that have been deployed are giving us good reports and we are happy that we are going to be successful this year.”