Dar es Salaam — Tight security was deployed on Wednesday September 05 in primary schools across the country as Standard Seven pupils sat for their final examination.
The Citizen survey established that there were no incidents of exam-related violence reported.
However, reporters were denied to speak to pupils, invigilators or teachers, as the police who were responsible for security said such interviews could only be conducted after the exams.
The examinations started at 8am. The Kiswahili paper was the first, and was followed by Mathematics and later English.
Today is the last day of exams and the timetable shows that pupils will first sit for Science examination in the morning before writing the Social Studies exam.
In Iringa, Kilolo District Commissioner Asia Abdallah warned parents who have the tendency of forcing their children to write wrong answers in their answer sheets so that they would not get enough marks to allow them continue with secondary education so that instead they would go and undertake jobs as house helps in major urban centres, particularly Dar es Salaam.
She claimed that there were parents who encouraged their children to purposely fail in their examinations, especially girls, so that they would later go and work as house helps.
"A number of parents have received orders (requests) from Dar es Salaam residents seeking house helps. So I warn those parents who encourage their children to fail exams for domestic employment," she told The Citizen yesterday.
National Examinations Council (Necta) executive secretary Charles Musonde said each of the five papers consist of 40 multiple choice questions and five non-multiple choice questions.
According to Dr Musonde, a total of 960,202 pupils including 456,230 boys or 47.51 per cent and 503,972 girls or 52.49 per cent sat for yesterday's examinations.
This is an increase of 4.7 per cent or 43,130 pupils compared with 917,072 who sat for 2017 primary education finals examinations.
"A total of 918,653 candidates will sit for examinations set in Kiswahili while 41,549 will write exams set in English," Dr Musonde was quoted as saying on Tuesday, a day before exams.
Among candidates writing this year's Standard Seven exams, 90 are completely blind while 846 others have visual impairment.
