Students pray before taking their secondary-leaving exams at Supiri Secondary School in Juba. (Photo: Moyo Jacob/Eye Radio).

The Ministry of General Education and Instruction will tighten security of staff ahead of the upcoming nation-wide exams, after its top officials received death threats from anonymous calls following the poor exams performance in 2023, an official said.

Deputy Minister Martin Tako disclosed the situation during the announcement of the exams timetable for the 2024-2025 certificates of Primary Education Secondary Education by National Examination Council.

Tako said some of the top education officials had received death threats from phone calls condemning them for tightening the exams invigilation and ruining the future of students.

The official doubled down on the ministry’s determination to ensure transparency during the examinations, which he said will never be deterred by the threats.

“We will never surrender and dilute the examination or allow the people to buy the examination from us and then put them in the in the social media, we will never do this,” Tako said.

“We are going to tighten the examination, more than that, we will not surrender to any threat.”

“Some of these threats that we received are just somebody calling to lash out that ‘you have destroyed this country, our children will not pass examination, we will kill you, then throws the whole telephone away.”

He said several efforts to trace the phone calls found that the lines had not been registered.

“There are a lot of crime with this modern technology, so it is difficult for you to trace them but if anybody was courageous enough to put this in the social media will trace and get him arrested.”

Mr. Tako added that “we are not afraid and they will not threaten us to surrender to dilute the examination.”

He further encourage the candidates who are registered for this year’s national examination to read hard in order to pass.

“We will set the examination within the syllabus. A clever student, who wants to pass should be very serious about the studies, prepare well, will pass but not, I have seen several times, students are not studying but then passing at the end of the academy years, this is what we have decided to stop it forever.”

Over 40 percent of the 45,000 candidates who set for the 2023-2024 South Sudan Certificate of Secondary Education (SSCSE) examination failed, according to the results released in August, which showed that only 17 students scored an A plain.

NEC disclosed that 26,444 candidates comprising 16,693 males and 9,807 females – accounting for over 50 percent have qualified for university admission entry, having secured the minimum grade C and above.

Meanwhile, at least 17,691 constituting 11, 264 males and 6427 females failed to attain the C benchmark and will subsequently have to repeat the senior four class.

The announcement of the SSCSE results, following an anxious eight-month wait by thousands of students and parents, uncovered a historic poor performance that will see the lowest admission to universities in the upcoming intake.

Education officials attribute the poor performance to newly introduced rigorous examination security and invigilation.