By Ousmane Coulibaly, Operations Manager

During the summer vacations in Mali, teachers took the opportunity to meet and discuss current events in the country. The biggest topic of discussion? A sudden policy change that resulted in many students failing the national exams…because they were no longer allowed to cheat.

 In mid-August, results of two big “graduation” exams in Mali were announced. For Mali Rising students, the exam – called the DEF -- tests whether students  graduate 9th grade. For high school students, a similar exam – called the Baccalareate – measures if students graduate high school. The results this year were terrible. For the DEF exam for middle school students, fewer than half of the students passed (about 48 percent); for high school the national pass rate was only 20 percent.

 These results were considered catastrophic — particularly for the Baccalareate exam, which saw one of the lowest scores recorded in the last ten years. The announcement of the results raised a lot of discussion among the Malian population in the capital city of Bamako and its surroundings.

 In late August, I went to Niamana; a neighborhood in the district of Bamako, where I met three people: a saleswoman: Salimata Traore, and two teachers, Mamadou Dembélé, a German teacher at Lycée Privé Saint Simon, and Alou Diallo, a French teacher at the middle school of Tieguena. These three people were sharing tea in a grin. A grin in Mali is a place where young people of the same generation, and even adults, meet to discuss and debate an issue over tea.

 I noticed that they had different opinions about the exam scores. While the teachers thought the results were satisfactory given the level of the students, the saleswoman felt the way the new policies were implemented were unfair.

 Mamadou Dembélé, the German teacher said, "I think the Baccalaureate results (20%) represents the real level of our students. I am a teacher and I supervised the Baccalaureate exam at the Lycée Basile Sow in Baguineda. During the school year, we noticed that the students did not learn their lessons, they spend all their time playing with their phones. Every year, the students rely on fraud for the Baccalaureate and the DEF. They thought they would have the exam questions in advance (like 2 or 3 days in advance) as they used to do. But this year the authorities organized things well, and the supervision of the exam was very tough. No communication between students, no phones and no other documents were allowed in the classrooms. The failure rate in the Baccalaureate is very high (80%) because the students did not get the exam questions in advance and they could not cheat in the classrooms.”

Similar ideas were put forward by Mr. Alou Diallo, a French teacher at Tieguena public middle school. He said, "I think the government organized the exams well, taking precautions against fraud in the DEF. This explains the low results of the DEF. Otherwise, during the last ten years, many students received the exam topics ahead of time (leaks) because of corruption. In addition, students were not well supervised because some supervisors let children enter the classrooms with their phones. But now the authorities have banned all this and anyone who violates the exam policy is immediately arrested and jailed. I personally appreciate the 40%, DEF scores of this year.”

 Contrary to what the two teachers said, Salimata Traore, a saleswoman, had other ideas. She shared:

"I think that the supervisors of the exam have tightened the control too much as my little brother told me. In Mali, both teachers and student parents know that the children do not have a good level. It's been over 10 years now, every time, the exam questions were leaked and the children could cheat easily because they had the exam questions in advance. So the students did not learn their lessons anymore and every year, they resort to cheating. But this year, they did not have the opportunity to cheat. So for me, the authorities should do a favor to arrange a little bit so that many students could pass. My older sister failed the Baccalaureate and my younger brother also failed the DEF. We are not at all happy with the results.”

 Although the three grin participants had different opinions about how the new policies were implemented, it was agreed that the  Malian authorities should redouble their efforts to push children to rely on their own efforts in the future, instead of letting them cheat. Why? If they manage to truly measure the students’ learning and advance those with good skills, it would add value to an education and could give more credibility to our diplomas/certificates at the international level.