By Sikhulile Dlamini
MBABANE – The Examination Council of Eswatini (ECESWA) will this year host its fellow examinations bodies from the SADC countries.
ECESWA will host the examinations bodies through the 14th Southern Africa Association for Educational Assessment (SAAEA) conference. The 13th edition of this conference was held last year in Botswana.
ECESWA Communications Officer Hlengiwe Ndlovu said the conference came at a crucial time when Eswatini was undergoing educational reforms. One of the reforms was that the high school course would no longer be five years, but would be reduced to four years. However, this reform was still undergoing the pilot project in 32 schools around the country.
Speaking at Eswatini TV’s Kusile Breakfast Show this morning, Ndlovu highlighted that the conference would have a great significance in ECESWA, since educators were impacted by assessment programs and reforms, such as lower check point assessment that were undergoing and there contemporary issues that needed to be discussed.
The SAAEA is a confederation of 11 countries comprising of 10 examining boards and it serves as an arena for member examining boards to discuss pertinent issues occurring in the assessment space.
Ndlovu also emphasised on the theme for the 14th SAAE conference which is, ‘Transforming educational assessment for equality and fairness in the 4th Industrial Revolution.’ She added that the theme acknowledged that we lived in the era of the 4th Industrial Revolution, which included super intelligent machines, digital space that was also growing massively.
“In as much as we have this great technological advancement in our time, the theme speaks to candidates being afforded quality education and all candidates having equal access to examination despite the 4th Industrial Revolution,” she added.
Ndlovu also mentioned that as one of topics to be discussed in the conference would include best practices of assessments in exams, ECESWA had implemented best practices over the years to enhance educational assessment standards, such as exploring the e-marking system.
“We also implemented an item banking system which was a highly digitalised question paper development system, which would come in hand in situations such as re-sit examinations,” Ndlovu said.
