Candidates at Juba Day Secondary School in Juba sit English paper on Monday, March 22, 2021 | Credit | Peter Luis

An expert has expressed fears about the future of the education sector after majority of the recent high school leaving examination candidates questionably passed.

Last month, the National Examinations Council released the South Sudan Certificate of Secondary Education results for the academic year 2020/2021 with girls performing better than boys.

Female candidates outperformed the male counterparts – with a passing percentage of 97.4% compared to the male at 97.3%.

According to the South Sudan National Examination Council, 33,912 students were registered for the 2020 exams.

However, 33,255 candidates sat the secondary school leaving examinations.

97.4 per cent of the candidates passed the exams, while 2.6 per cent failed.

Michael Lopuke, who worked at the education sector for years, blamed the dubious results on examination leakages.

“For years, we have been hearing about the availability of the examination papers. They already roam about in towns,” Lopuke told Eye Radio on Monday.

“I would like to attest that if you are the administration of the University of Juba, many of the lecturers will attest that those students with high marks of over 90 and 80 are students who cannot even qualify to be on the list of what the university requires. Those results are not awarded according to the competence of that student.”

Lopuke explained that such a malpractices in the administration of the national examinations will have negative impact on the country’s education sector in the near future if the concerned authorities do not look into the matter as soon as possible.

“With such malpractices, the country will produce incompetent judges and doctors that will not be able to save lives.

“With all these sorts of malpractice, the country will be gearing towards its diminishing so we need to uphold.”

The Ministry of General Education and Instruction is yet to comment on the matter.

Michael Lopuke was the first minister of education in Eastern Equatoria state, from 2010 to 2014 and was then appointed as undersecretary at the national ministry of general education from June 2014 to February 2019.