CTVET introduces serialisation in exams
Starting this year, all examinations conducted by the Commission for Technical and Vocational Education and Training (CTVET) will be serialised, the Director-General of the CTVET, Dr Fred Kyei Asamoah, has announced.
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Consequently, he said candidates taking any of the examinations conducted by the CTVET would write different versions of the same questions but with different positions of the test items, options and keys on the question papers.
“With serialisation, candidates in the same examination hall may receive the same questions but with different question numbers on each of the series.
2023 Certificate II
“The purpose of this exercise is to ensure the issue of cheating during examinations and leaking of examination questions is eliminated or minimised,” Dr Asamoah announced at a press briefing on the 2023 Certificate II Examinations and other examinations for technical students.
The serialisation of the examination, which will start from July 10 to August 4, 2023, will be in eight series for each set of questions.
A total of 32,402 candidates made up of 23,990 males and 8,412 females would be writing the examination in seven programme areas.
The programmes are Pre-tertiary Diploma, Technician Part I, Diploma in Business Studies, Certificate II – Intermediate, Technician Part Two, Technician Part Three and Advance.
Dr Asamoah explained that looking at the numbers taking the examination this year, it meant the interest in the technical education was increasing and was hopeful that the country would attain gender parity in the TVET area.
Serialisation
Touching on the serialisation, the CTVET director-general said key among the main characteristics of serialisation test were that it was easy to test students with different versions of the same set of questions and also, it allowed the same test items to be administered at different examination centres.
“It produces consistent and comparable scores as well as measures the same content and construct, while encouraging teachers and learners to do effective teaching and learning in school,” Dr Asamoah explained.
He said all those steps were geared towards ensuring that government’s effort in transforming TVET agenda in the country did not end up being a zero work.
Competencies
“The end game is to make sure our examinations are digitised.
If the examinations are digitised, we can give the whole book or even the exam papers to learners before the exam, but if you are not prepared, you will not be able to do well,” Dr Asamoah stated.
He said the case of TVET learners was more critical because a little mistake with their work could result in a number of fatalities.
“It is even more important when it comes to TVET that our learners are well-prepared because they are not just going to write something that when they make a mistake, it can be corrected.
If it has to do with cooking, the chef makes a mistake and it can kill a whole lot of people.
If it has to do with auto mechanics, mechanical engineering or mechatronics, any mistake can cause a lot of havoc,” he said, adding, “that is the reason why we want to make sure that our learners in the TVET sector are well-prepared but not half-baked.”
He recalled that during the 2022 examination, the CTVET beefed up security, using the national security, the police service and other security agencies, which resulted in the reduction of cheating and also led to an improved performance conduct of the examination.
“But most importantly, we want to make sure that our learners in the TVET sector are fully prepared for the job market because they have to make decisions that will have to do with the lives of all of us,” Dr Asamoah explained.
