The Vice President for Service Cluster, Hussein Abdelbagi Akol. [Photo: Courtesy]

Vice President Hussein Abdelbagi Akol has called for inclusion of examination marking costs in the 2024-2025 fiscal year budget to avoid results delay after the education ministry took eight months to complete the marking of 2023-2024 SSCSE exams.

Abdelbagi said despite efforts to improve the education system, budget constraints have remained one of the institution’s biggest challenges in ensuring timely marking of national exams.

He said the Service Cluster under him had previously proposed and submitted education budgets to the parliament but added that they were not approved.

Addressing an event organized by the National Examination Council, Abdelbagi reiterated the need to include the cost of exams marking in the ministry’s budget for the upcoming financial year.

“We have made every effort to put education on the right track, but we have a problem, which is that every time we arrange the education budget and submit this budget to parliament for approval, we get something that we did not arrange for,” he said.

“We want to include the cost of marking the exams in the ministry’s budget because we faced two problems. The first time was last year when we held the exams and did not find money to mark these exams, which was reflected in the delay in accepting students into the universities.”

“Until now, we have not corrected, and even about this year’s exams, I am sure that we will face some difficulties because the budget allocated for the exams is not sufficient.”

In July 2024, the National Minister of General Education and Instruction Awut Deng raised concerns about the delayed marking of the certificate of secondary Education examination papers and the hardship faced by public school teachers due to delayed salaries.

This came after the results of the SSCSE examination which was carried out in December 2023 took eight months to come out, leaving the 17,691 students who failed across the county with only a few months to study and retake the exams.

Addressing a meeting unveiling the examination results, Education Minister Awut Deng Acuil said the journey through the process has not been easy for the entire education fraternity.

Minister Awut decried challenges facing the conduct of national examinations including inadequate transportation to the states and delayed disbursement of exams budget from the finance ministry.