Mary Jo Matta – Mtv
The date for the official secondary exams in Lebanon is clear and clear: June 29. There is no decision to postpone or cancel at this moment. However, the recent regional escalation and the possibility of things taking a turn for the worse brings the issue back to the forefront.
“It is too early to make a decision to cancel the official secondary exams,” says the Secretary General of Catholic Schools, Father Youssef Nasr. He continued, in an interview on the MTV website, that “it is better not to get ahead of things, especially if we are several weeks away from this entitlement.”
The killing of two students, Teodosia and Tony Karam, accompanied by their father, James, on the Al-Khardali Road in an Israeli raid last week while they were returning from the Lebanese University after taking exams, sparked a widespread wave of anger against the Minister of Education, Rima Karami, who insists on holding the exams despite the difficult security conditions. This raises several questions about the guarantees that the Ministry obtained from the security services to preserve the safety of students and ease of movement during exam days.
In this context, Father Nasr refers to a meeting held yesterday between the Educational Parliamentary Committee, the Minister of Interior and Municipalities, Ahmed Al-Hajjar, and the Minister of Defense, Michel Mansi, to obtain reassurances, stressing that “exams will not be held without taking all security measures that guarantee the safety of students,” adding that “we are dealing with a treacherous enemy, and therefore we cannot guarantee anything, and what happened in the last hours is not reassuring.”
The decision of the French Ministry of Education to cancel the baccalaureate and intermediate certificate exams could constitute an introduction to proposing a third solution that satisfies the various parties and ensures the safety of the students, especially since France adopted the granting of certificates based on the grades included in the file of each student within his school. From here, Nasr proposes two basic possibilities: “Either postponing the holding of exams in the event of entering into a state of all-out war, or adopting the distribution of official certificates to students based on school calendar scores.”
He also stresses that “the insistence on holding exams reflects the importance given to the secondary school certificate and the difficulty of dispensing with it,” considering that “Lebanese students wishing to travel abroad must be taken into consideration and ensured that they obtain an official, recognized certificate, as the certificate has not and will not suffice.”
What about the option of conducting exams in each school separately? Nasr answers: “The possibility of conducting exams in schools individually means that we have the ability to conduct them officially, and thus the two decisions become equal.” As for the situation of students in the south, he believes that “they can sit for exams as a result of their presence in shelter centers or safe areas.”
Official exams are not the only test that students in Lebanon face. The curse of geography tested them from a young age until they no longer fear tests. The bet on the time factor remains key: either postponement…or no cancellation.
