The Central Equatoria State Ministry of General Education on Tuesday announced the dates for the 2024 academic year for both primary and secondary schools.
Addressing reporters at the state education ministry headquarters in Juba, Central Equatoria State Education Minister Cirisio Zakaria Lado said the 2024 academic year will run from 5 February and close on 20 December 2024.
“The schedules for the schools will be in accordance with the General Education Act and learning will start on Monday and end on Friday, public holidays will be observed,” he revealed.
According to the state general education ministry, the academic year will be divided into three terms.
“The first term starts on 5 Feb 2024 and ends on Friday 10 May 2024, the second term will start on 27 May and end on 6 September and the third term will commence on Monday 23 September and end on Friday 20 December 2024,” Lado said.
He said both primary and secondary school candidate classes will sit for their exams in November and December.
For his part, Loro Nyigilo Luwala, the examination director in Central Equatoria State, said marking of examination scripts for the recently sat Primary Leaving Certificate examinations has started.
“The marking is still going on, it started on 8 January,” he said. “We divided the markers into two groups, Group A already finished yesterday and Group B will take one week to finish after that we will go back to the control.”
Meanwhile, Luate William Alex, the Director General at the Ministry of Education in Central Equatoria State, said that last academic year, the National Examination Council brought qualified teachers to mark the exams instead of university students.
“We are in the center of marking but our period to start marking was impacted because of mobilizing teachers. We have more than 500 teachers doing the marking and this time around we pressed very hard that professional teachers do the marking” he revealed. “Previously, before I came, I heard that sometimes university students have been coopted because marking is not easy because we have to mark clearly and according to content and coverage and the measure.”
Luate urged the public to contribute to education even in their capacities.
“We appeal for more budgetary support because our needs a much. I appeal to everyone to help and volunteer to uplift education in their ways because if it is left to me, the minister, and the directors, we cannot do much,” he stressed. “The government desires good results but how much is the real resource envelope? There are still schools under trees and this is not good.”
“They say 80 percent of our teachers are volunteers, people who have finished high school and so on and so we need resources to train them,” Luate added.