Thabahtoona says Tawjihi pass rate ‘shocking’

AMMAN — A student advocate movement on Wednesday criticised the low pass rate in the General Secondary Education Certificate Examination (Tawjihi), describing the results as “shocking”

Tawjihi results were announced on Sunday, and the Education Ministry said that 40 per cent of students had passed. 

But the National Campaign for Defending Students’ Rights (Thabahtoona) said that the ministry had not taken into account the thousands of students who registered for exams but did not show up. 

“This rate is not accurate when we calculate the number of those who did not sit for the exam, which is extremely high,” said Thabahtoona Coordinator Fakher Daas.

“A total of 127,827 students registered for the summer session, but only 80,747 attended, which means that 47,125 decided not to take part in the exam. It is a terrifying number,” he told The Jordan Times.

Thabahtoona calculated the pass rate to be 26 per cent, after including those who did not sit for the exam. 

The other “shocking” result, according to Daas, was that only one out of every four students in the IT stream passed the exam, while the pass ratio in the literary and scientific streams only reached 18 per cent and 63 per cent respectively. 

“This means that students reach the Tawjihi without being qualified to take the exam. The problem goes back to the previous school years,” he reasoned.   

While the results showed that seven of the top achieving students came from public schools, which the Education Ministry attributed to the better educational system in government-run schools, Thabahtoona charged that the success of seven students was not an indicator of the progress of education. 

“Assessing the advancement of education in public schools is done by reading the pass rate in these schools and comparing them with previous years,” Thabahtoona said in a statement. 

“They should also be compared with the grades in private schools. Having a number of students with high grades is likely the result of individual efforts,” the group added.

Students’ Tawjihi scores determine which majors they can study at universities.

Tawjihi results also showed that no student scored 99 per cent or higher this year.

“That is the first time this happened in 10 years, which shows that either the exam was hard or the academic level of students has gone down, or both,” noted Daas, who added that only 237 students scored higher than 95 per cent, compared with 491 last year and 768 in 2014.

Officials at the Education Ministry were not available for comment.