AMMAN — Minister of Education Mohammad Thneibat on Sunday attributed the major reason behind the low performance in the General Secondary Certificate Examination’s (Tawjihi) winter session to students’ inadequate preparedness and their over-reliance on private tutoring.
The Tawjihi average determines the future education path of students.
Announcing the results of the Tawjihi’s winter session, Thneibat was quoted by the Jordan News Agency, Petra, as saying that the ministry will launch a comprehensive campaign on cultural centres that provide private tutoring to students to ensure their compliance with relevant regulations and conditions.
The minister also described the winter session as “complete success”, attributing the reason to the set of measures taken by the ministry in collaboration with the Interior Ministry, Public Security Department, the two Houses of Parliament, the media, Ministry of Information and Communications Technology, Audit Bureau and Teachers Association, among others.
The minister said that the passing percentages in the major subjects, including mathematics, physics, Arabic, English and computer science reached 55.2 per cent, 58.4 per cent, 88.4 per cent, 72.7 per cent and 93.8 per cent respectively.
Around 170,969 students registered for the winter session, including 89,286 boys and 81,683 girls, of whom 106,684 are regular students, according to the Education Ministry.
In previous remarks, Thneibat said the “integrity rate” in the Tawjihi winter session stood between 85 and 90 per cent and that the exams were held with a “very high” level of discipline.
The minister added that around 24,000 registered students did not sit for the winter session exam, during which some 6,000 violations were recorded.
In order to avoid a repeat of the “flagrant” violations witnessed in previous sessions, the ministry took strict measures this year, such as appointing 24,000 monitors and installing special devices to jam mobile reception, thus foiling attempts to cheat through cellular phones.
These procedures cost the government around JD26 million, he said.
The ministry also cancelled multiple-choice questions and introduced more challenging questions in the subject tests.
Meanwhile, the Central Traffic Department on Sunday issued 702 tickets for traffic violations associated with the festivities that started in the wake of the announcement of the results, according to the Public Security Department’s media centre.
The tickets were issued between the time Tawjihi results were issued in the morning until 5pm.
Thneibat also revealed Sunday that the ministry has recorded multiple and repeated attempts to hack into the (EduWave website) on which the results were posted.
He said that all hacking attempts have failed due to the highly advanced technology the ministry employs.
