Testing, Testing, 123

Mid-term examinations were initially planned for Monday and Tuesday of this past week. On Monday, we arrived a bit late, and scrambled into our classrooms amidst the pouring rain. I found my students talking in self-made groups, sprawled across the room, some intensely studying their notebooks, others simply talking. “Aren’t you supposed to be testing?” I asked Deborah. “Yes,” she replied, “they were supposed to start very early.” “So, why didn’t you?” “Because of the rain,” Benet answered for her. “So… you can’t test when it’s raining?” “No…” they all laughed, “we don’t have the tests.”

There was too much misunderstanding happening here, so I went to ask Teacher Rau. Teacher Rau is a skinny, lively young man with a few crooked teeth, but a wide, joyous grin. He always wears well-ironed khaki pants and a collared shirt, but sometimes wears a blue apron that falls past his knees to protect himself from a coating of chalk, which adds to his slightly goofy façade. He is the P6 class teacher, meaning that he minds their affairs, like attendance, and teaches them two subjects rather than one. He teaches math and social studies, but I feel closer to him than to either of my actual co-operating teachers. We often exchange glances as students giggle at his bodily-function-based jokes during his animated lectures.

So he explained to me that Headmaster King James and Deputy-to-the-Headmaster John (my CT for science), and Head of Academics Erasto (my CT for English) were all hereto forth absent. This means that the head office, where all the examinations were kept, was locked. So were the P4 classroom and the library, and the keys to both were kept, of course, in the head office. Cassie, Matt, Alex and I were all told that we wouldn’t be teaching neither Monday nor Tuesday, so we didn’t have any lessons formally prepared. Many other teachers were unsure of what to do, too, in case it was announced that testing would begin right after we began teaching.

The goofballs decided to make a fake Teacher Rau in his absence

The rain eventually let up and I found Erasto, John, Rau, and King James talking outside my classroom. “So are we testing?” I asked King James. He answered no, and gave a reason that sounded to me like “the students do not know enough.” So, we hadn’t taught them all the material that would be on the tests? This is exactly what I had inquired about before; I had been worried that I hadn’t taught enough and wanted to know what would be on those tests– why hadn’t they told me? Frustration boiled up inside me, and almost burst out in a really unprofessional way.

But I kept my cool, and I discovered that there had been a serious misunderstanding somewhere in the conversation. What King James had really meant to say was that there weren’t enough copies of the test for every student. Why hadn’t they been sure to order enough? Hadn’t they taken a census of the school? I kept the questions rolling. Finally, I reached the true explanation.

Schools are not required to take mid-term examinations here. Mostly private schools take them on to assess their progress. Only the end-of-term exams are administered by the government. So schools independently place orders with an examination company in Kasese. But the company in Kasese gets their stock of exams shipped from Kampala, and out of fear of ordering too many and being in financial limbo, the companies underestimate the number of exams they will need. So even though a school will place an order and have a pick-up date, they might not get all the exams they need, and they will have to wait until another shipment comes in from Kampala. The only solution I see to this problem is conducting a census of the schools in Kasese district and having them register for exams with exact numbers (or overestimates) far in advance. However, this would require manpower and expensive travel to visit schools, widespread internet access, or a speedy and effective mailing system to conduct the census. I don’t think that the district has the resources for any of these options. Plus, registering the number of students in advance would be very difficult, considering that students show up even weeks after school has started.

So this problem was much bigger than what met the eye. It was connected to the same structural problems that trickle down and affect so many Ugandans’ lives. Knowing that, I was much more capable of accepting the present conditions and seizing the opportunity to play games with my students. We had a lot of fun and I felt much more connected to them after.

Some of the class's younger boys playing volleyball

Tuesday also passed without testing, but finally Wednesday began with Math and Science exams. As they were testing, I did some much-needed planning. On Thursday, though, I stupidly asked to see the science exams, just out of curiosity. This prompted the question, “Oh, will you be marking them?” Seriously? I thought, this is how I’m presented with the fact that I’m supposed to grade them? John said that we could share the work, but I knew that this meant I’d do them all. I understood that John was busy (with planning my field trip, on everything else) so I was alright with doing the work, but it was extremely frustrating to receive this news after testing. I felt out of the loop for this whole process. I politely asked John and King James to please inform me of their expectations beforehand, because it made a big impact on how I would need to plan my time. I don’t think they fully understood my point of view, because I suspect that they have projects dumped on them all the time without warning and probably thought that I was being whiny. But I figured that it would be better to be honest and open rather than harbor negative feelings.

So I spent the entire day grading 34 100-question examinations. Most of the questions were from other grades; only 8 were from this grade. To my relief, most students answered the 4 questions I had taught correctly. The ones who struggled with them struggled with everything, so I didn’t feel like I was to blame too much. However there were 4 questions from material I hadn’t covered yet, and John wouldn’t let me “not count” those questions. So, if they had successfully understood what I taught, their scores would be 8 points higher. I felt awful, even though these tests don’t officially count for anything. Still, the exams were disastrous. The average score was a 49.3%, the highest 78%, and the lowest a sad 29%. It seemed like a memory test, to see if students could reach back to 3 years ago and recite a line regurgitated from a textbook. Most of them failed to do so. I could tell that some used context clues and analysis to make educated guesses. The rest of the class definitely needs instruction on how to do this.

These two, incapable of coordinating poses, actually rocked their exams, relatively speaking

I did the best I could to mark these questions, but many related to experiences that my students, not I, would be exposed to on a daily basis. For example, what do I know about removing worms from pigs? Or about the principles of the Primary Health Center? I hadn’t learned the material they learned in previous grades, so I didn’t know which heating process was which or which communicable diseases were considered a part of the classic 7 deadly diseases, and I didn’t have the internet to find out. I found several flaws in the answer guide, so how would I know if the answers it gave for material unknown to me would be correct? How would I know if a student gave a perfectly logical answer, but it just wasn’t listed in the answer guide? This was another reason I was frustrated. No one was there to help answer my questions and I seemed like just the wrong person to do this job.

So now I have to spend time reviewing the answers to this test, which takes away from my time to teach new content. I think that the whole process was a pretty useless exercise. But I suppose it could scare some students into studying harder for their end-of-term exams. I don’t like scare tactics, and I don’t like end-of-term exams, but they will need to pass them to move on to the next grade, which is a government-issued policy.

What a structural problem indeed.

Here's a picture to cheer you up! Mbambu Ruth is my soul mate.