Zimbabwe Education Minister issues statement on leakage of 2022 O-Level Exam

The examination starting time was also changed from 8.00 am to 9.00 am so that all schools are able to collect the candidates’ question papers in the morning of the examination and administer the examination.

Each cluster centre is guarded by two ZRP details at night to ensure security at night.

It is very sad that with all these measures in place, the Head and Deputy Head of Thokozane Secondary School who had the keys to where the question papers were, broke the keys which belong to the monitor and stole the examination papers and sold them to an attendant at a pharmacy in Zvishavane.  He sold the question papers on social media platforms.  

Ordinary Level examination had 278 760 candidates but only 4 961 were involved in examination malpractice that included either pre-access to examination question papers, collusion or other as found and reported by the investigators, school authorities or concerned stakeholders.  This represents 1.78% of the candidature.  

Arrests were made to candidates who received and sent papers on WhatsApp. School officials who were implicated as well and ordinary citizens were also arrested.  It is important for Members to know that one Kudakwashe Betserai was arrested for fraud.  He registered an Econet line in the name of ZIMSEC and he fleeced members of the public as he masqueraded as a ZIMSEC official.

Madam Speaker Ma’am, it did not come from internal operations of ZIMSEC but came after the question papers had been deposited at cluster centres where Heads are entrusted to keep the question papers safe.  ZIMSEC used three tools to fish out candidates who had pre-access to question papers.  These are:

• Investigations which involved ZIMSEC Security supported by the Commercial Crime Division (CID) and the Central Intelligence Organisation (CIO);
• Marking by examiners, there is a way of noticing candidates who could have had pre-access to papers;
• Grade review process – the grade review process, this is where the ZIMSEC computer fishes out of the data, candidates who have significant grade differences between component and subject.

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