Education authorities in Malawi on Tuesday voided the results of examinations sat by 80 000 students after it emerged that copies of the papers were leaked and sold beforehand to some pupils.
Education Secretary Anthony Livuza said fresh senior secondary-school certificate examinations will now be drawn up, which students will have to sit next month.
”The decision to nullify, redevelop and readminister the examination has been made so that those candidates who were exposed to leaked examination papers do not have an unfair advantage over their colleagues who wrote the same examination without any assistance,” Livuza said in a statement.
The examinations, which were printed in South Africa under tight security, were leaked in Malawi when they were delivered and sold on the streets days before students, under the watchful eye of police.
Officials at the Malawi National Examinations Board (Maneb), which administers examinations, have previously denied that copies were leaked.
However, dozens of people were arrested while selling the exam papers.
In 2000, similar examinations were cancelled when some papers were leaked and sold on the streets, forcing then president Bakili Muluzi to fire Maneb’s chief executive, Meria Nowa-Phiri. — Sapa-AFP