AFTER POOR EXAM RESULTS, ARSON ATTACK ON SCHOOL

A group of pupils in one Maputo secondary school have reacted to mass exam failure by setting fire to part of the school.According to a report carried by the independent television station, STV, the arson occurred in the Mozambican Heroes Secondary School in the Maputo neighbourhood of Bagamoyo. Here, 85 per cent of the pupils who sat 10th and 12th grade exams in early December failed.On Thursday night, unidentified arsonists, presumed to be pupils from the school, climbed over the back wall of the school, doused the office of the educational directorate with kerosene and set it on fire.If they expected to destroy the exam results, they failed, since the results had already been moved from that office and were being kept elsewhere. But one computer containing student records was seriously damaged in the blaze.The security guard on duty on Thursday night, Antonio Holoco, said that, when he saw the fire, he immediately contacted the fire brigade, who came to the school and extinguished the blaze.Holoco had no doubt pupils were responsible. “They came in over the back, they smashed the windows and burnt the office”, he said. “Many failed the exams and they thought the results were in that office, but they had already been taken somewhere else”.The Criminal Investigation Police (PIC) are currently investigating the fire.The exams in question are known as “extraordinary exams”, but what was truly extraordinary about them was the failure rate. According to Ministry of Education officials, 131,203 pupils sat the exams throughout the country, and 101,027 of them (77 per cent) failed.It was claimed that the high failure rate was due to the fact that many of the students are outside of full time education. There were cases of students who took the exams, but had interrupted their full time studies three or four years earlier.