BY PATRICIA SIBANDA
THE Primary and Secondary Education ministry yesterday said students at public and private schools who do not possess national identity cards could still register and sit for examinations without producing the documents.
This was revealed by ministry spokesperson Taungana Ndoro who told NewsDay that schools should not turn away students if they do not produce identity cards (IDs) during examinations.
In 2019, the Primary and Secondary Education ministry said children without IDs would not be allowed to sit for public examinations.
“When a student is enrolled at a particular public or private school, there is no need to have an ID because, as the ministry, we assume that when a pupil is enrolled at a school, then automatically they are known, hence, we see no need for them to produce an ID,” he said.
Ndoro said most schools tended to request proof of identity during examinations from private candidates only.
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“Private candidates should have an ID because they are not known to the school and they have never been enrolled at that particular school where they want to sit for their examination. Therefore, it becomes a must that they must produce their IDs before they are allowed to enter the examination room to avoid instances of cheating,” he said.
Ndoro encouraged students to acquire IDs on attainment of the age of 16 in order to avoid complications in the future.
The 2019 proposal that students must produce IDs in order for them to be allowed to sit for examinations was made by the Bulawayo acting provincial education director Olicah Fikelephi Kaira.
This was during a public hearing by the Zimbabwe Human Rights Commission (ZHRC) which discussed issues pertaining to access to identity documents by citizens.
Kaira said both birth certificates and national identity cards were requirements for pupils to register for examinations.
She also said birth certificates were a prerequisite when candidates register for any national examination.
Kaira further said that statistics showed that out of 54 479 pupils enrolled at secondary schools in the country, 961 did not have either a national ID or a birth certificate.
She said in primary schools, out of the 133 143 students enrolled, 12 808 did not have birth certificates.
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