Only 27% of those who sat Tonga School Certificate passed Featured
14 January, 2019. The Ministry of Education and Training wishes to announce that the results of the Tonga School Certificate (TSC) 2019 is now officially released.
There were 30 schools (14 schools in Tongatapu and 16 from the outer-islands) that offered the TSC examinations, of which a total of 1970 candidates were registered.
This is a substantial decrease from a total of 2039 candidates in 2018.
The overall pass rate for TSC 2019 is 27%.
This is a drop from the rate of 33% in 2018.
A standard pass is English plus three BEST subjects at Achieved Grade.
The best performing school is Tonga High School with 86% pass rate. Tonga High School also had the most consistent improvement rate since 2016.
The most improved school from 2018 to 2019 was St. Joseph Community College with 31% pass rate, which is a 27% improvement from 2018.
The school with the most candidates enrolled in the TSC was Liahona High School with a total of 233 candidates.
The results will be released to the schools on 13th January 2020 and can be picked up from the respective schools on Tuesday 14 January 2020.
The results of the candidates are shown by Grades only.
For information relating to grades,the Ministry advise students to contact their school’s principal.
8 comments
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EXCUSE ME LISIATE...you cannot use your personal opinion (to accept or reject) the answer in a scientific study issue. You need to replicate the study (Fiji Education Department, 2016) to dispute the original study findings, and their analysis, otherwise you're blowing in the wind.
For a start, it is a positivist (quantitative) study, so you'll need to gather your data and replicate their methodology. Again, numbers don't lie, but your personal opinion needs education in scientific research.
Your opinion is fine to publish, but it is the wrong argument for this scientific study. -
I prefer discussions to be meaningful and conducted with courtesy. So I am going to ignore most of Sione’s post of 27/01/20 and stick to the point.
My post of 27/01/20 is simple and clear. So let us not over-complicate things. My point is that Sione has made some very strong assertions (They stole our children's future with the "Raw Marks" big lie) and I simply point out that additional evidence is required to make his conclusion sound.
This is essentially Sione’s argument: The low 27% pass rate in the Tonga School Certificate last year was due to the implementation of the Raw Marks system by the Tonga Ministry of Education in 2015. Fiji adopted the Raw Marks system in the same year and they had an increase in plagiarism.
I accept those three pieces of evidence that Sione relies upon. I contend, however, that his conclusion cannot be drawn from that evidence alone. We need to know if there is evidence that: Fiji has experienced increasingly low pass rates since 2015; there has been an increase in plagiarism in Tonga since 2015; and, plagiarism has been established to be caused by the Raw Marks system in both Tonga and Fiji.
If Sione stands by his argument then he and I would have to agree to disagree. -
THANK YOU LISIATE IKAAFU...What kind of supporting evidence are you looking for, or are you just making an argument for the sake of being argumentative? Or muddied the water so you can score a point? Strong supporting evidence? What is your theoretical premise that disqualifies a comparison between Tongan vs. Fijian students?
Are you looking for a "positivism" or "phenomenological" evidence? Take your pick because there are only 2 choices, but I'm willing to wager Fiji Education study (2016) is a quantitative (positivist study) because they used statistics (number of students; number of passes vs. number of failures).
Like I stated: Numbers don't lie. And Tongan students aren't so righteous as the wind-driven snow not to take advantage of a flawed and weak (inferior) Raw Marks system, which is supposed to guard against plagiarism.
Tonga's 27% success rate shows more students weren't vetted, or tutored hard enough to pass. The same results if you wished to use a "correlational" relationship test (another positivism method) to prove Tongan students were not as guilty as the case in Fiji, but I doubt it very much.
You have neither strong supporting evidence that cheating (plagiarism) did not contribute to Tonga's high failure rate. There's a simple descriptive evidence by observation: plagiarism increased and failure rates rose. -
I thank Sione for his response to my query regarding “Raw Marks and Plagiarism”.
My query was out of curiosity as I found it interesting that the “Raw Marks” system of assessment, could be responsible for the increase of plagiarism in Fiji and the low pass rate in the Tonga School Certificate examination, last year.
Sione’s argument, essentially, is that, in Fiji, there was a substantial increase in plagiarism when the Raw Marks system was introduced by their Ministry of Education, in 2015. Tonga uses the same system of assessment so plagiarism must be flourishing there too. So the low pass rate in the Tonga School Certificate examination last year, may be attributed to the use of the Raw Marks system.
With all due respect, that argument has flaws, for the following reasons:
• There is no evidence that the Raw Marks system is the primary cause of or a substantial contributing factor to the increase of plagiarism in Fiji;
• There is no evidence that Fiji, under the Raw Marks system, experiences similar low pass rates to that in Tonga, last year; and
• There is no evidence that plagiarism is a problem in Tonga and that it is on the rise after the introduction of the Raw Marks system in 2015.
In absence of the evidence stated above, it cannot be accepted that the premises are true. The conclusion may or may not be logical but it is definitely not sound.
Some very strong assertions are being made about the Raw Marks system and the low pass rate in the Tonga School Certificate last year without compelling evidence to support them. -
Ui mai 'a Siaosi Pohiva, Piveni Piukala, Hepeti Takeifanga, Penisimani Fifita pea vaku mai mo e Palemia malolo ke 'ai ha'anau tali ke palanisi 'a e talanoa. Na'e pole foki 'a 'Akilisi 'i Falealea ke o ange 'a e kau poto ke ne fakahinohino'i pea na'e vavalo 'a Siaosi mo Hepeti 'e kake 'a e kalafi 'o e lava ki 'olunga he ta'u ni 2020 'o fai k he kaha'u.
Me'apango ko e kau 'amatua ne nau fai 'a e ngaue 'a e kau polofesinale. -
THANK YOU LISIATE IKAAFU...just as my post says, according to the Fiji Education Department (2016 Report), the Raw Marks system seemed to allow a whole lot more plagiarizing among students, which means comparing to the previous system.
If you are proposing that Raw Marks has no relationship to plagiarism, then I can't help you. Although cheating is common in all examination systems, the Report finds more plagiarism with the Raw Marks as it was administered in Fiji.
If you're looking for the correlational or cause-and-effect relationships between Raw Marks and plagiarism, you'll have to go read the entire Fiji Education 2016 Report. You can then make your own analysis.
Tonga's poor 27% results while using the Raw Marks system seems to tell me that the problems found in Fiji may have to be the same reasons for such failures in Tonga. It's a logical conclusion because numbers don't lie, and Raw Marks system is used in both Fiji and Tonga. -
How does "Raw Marks" relate to plagiarism?
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BLAME THE FORMER PM AND EDUCATION MINISTER 'AKILISI POHIVA; CURRENT EDUCATION MINISTER FIFITA; NON-CREDENTIALED COMPUTER EXPERTS PIVENI PIUKALA AND SIAOSI POHIVA.
They stole our children's future with the "Raw Marks" big lie, which now shows how poorly Tongan pupils are doing. Fiji Education adopted the "Raw Marks" at the same time (2015) and found out quickly that students were plagiarizing (copy each other's school work) instead of doing their own homework. No wonder Tonga's passing grade is at 27%.
The warning voices of Dr. Vesisio Pongi and his fellow educators with proper credentials cried out in protest, but the late Education Minister and PM 'Akilisi Pohiva wanted his "molitonga educated" friends to takeover the education of our children. Now those young kids are struggling to pass the basic exams, but the 4 years of "molitonga education" are now showing their fruits.
SOME PEOPLE NEED TO TAKE RESPONSIBILITY FOR STEALING OUR CHILDREN'S FUTURE. WHO ARE THEY?