MP says Tawjihi maths exam had 'unclear' questions, urges minister to take action

AMMAN — An MP on Sunday sent a memo to Education Minister Mohammad Thneibat complaining about the maths exam for the scientific stream in the General Secondary Education Certificate Examination's (Tawjihi) winter session.

MP Jamil Nimri (Irbid, 2nd District) issued a statement saying the memo urged Thneibat to reconsider the exam due to several reasons, including "unclear" questions.

"We established these findings based on the testimonies of several accredited teachers. The main findings were questions that is from outside the curricula, a numerical mistake in one of the questions and failure to take into account students' different abilities when writing the questions," Nimri said.

However, the Education Ministry said the exam is "absolutely sound" and all the questions are from the curriculum.

"The exam is no different from our previous maths tests in terms of the type of questions and there are absolutely no mistakes," Zeidan Abbadi, head of the ministry's examination department, told The Jordan Times.

He said the correction committees have tested the questions and maintained that they were "proper" and "regular".

Students were split over the issue, with some saying that they answered all the questions without any difficulties and others describing the test paper as complicated and "unfair".

"I felt like the questions were written by a PhD professor who did not even bother look at our maths textbook," Layth Al Qadommi, a Tawjihi student, commented on Facebook.

On the other hand, Khalid Shakaa only heard about the controversy surrounding the exam three days after it was conducted. 

"It went very smoothly. I thought the exam was easy I started to panic when reading what people have to say about it. I now wonder ,if I have many mistakes and didn't realise it," he wrote on his Facebook page.

Some 115,000 students sat for the exam, which was held last Wednesday.

Drop in violations

On Saturday, Thneibat said there is a significant drop in Tawjihi violations in the current winter session in comparison with previous ones. 

Fourteen violations were registered on the second day of the exams compared with 45 in 2014 and 492 in 2013, the Jordan News Agency, Petra, reported. 

The first day witnessed 35 violations around the Kingdom compared to 65 in 2014 and 219 in 2013's winter session.

On Sunday, Thneibat reiterated that the exams have been going smoothly, commending students' discipline.

The Tawjihi exam that was scheduled for Saturday was moved to January 13 at the same place and time, according to a decision the minister announced on Friday. 

The decision was aimed at ensuring the safety of students, teachers and personnel supervising the exams under the prevailing weather conditions 

Under the decision, other school examinations were also moved from Saturday to the day following the last day of exams, Petra reported.