Students experience exam nightmare
Published:Wednesday | May 26, 2010 | 12:00 AM
Arthur Hall, Senior Staff Reporter
While Education Minister Andrew Holness and his technocrats were busy yesterday with the technicalities of easing disruptions to the sitting of external examinations because of the violence in Kingston, there were hundreds of students living the reality.
For these students, struggling to get to an examination centre - possibly at institutions they had never before visited in their lives - was the easy part.
Sitting an external exam while gunfire echoed was much more difficult.
"We heard a lot of guns barking, and every time I hear them, I jumped," said one student of the Convent of Mercy (Alpha) Academy yesterday.
She was among a group of sixth-form students who sat a Caribbean Advanced Proficiency Examination (CAPE) yesterday morning.
While the exam was in progress, gunmen and police engaged in a more-than-hour-long gun battle metres away.
The sound of high-powered weapons rocked the buildings where the students were sitting their exams.
"It was scary, but I still did my best," said one student.
"We will come for the other subjects, even if there is more violence throughout the week," said another, as she joined her colleagues across South Camp Road to begin the unusually difficult trip back home.
task of calming students
In the meantime, at the nearby Wolmer's Girls' School, administrators had their hands full trying to calm students sitting external exams while the gunfire sounded.
"It was really difficult. They were responding to the sound, and as soon as the shots, or a barrage of shots, were fired, they were frightened, they were screaming. It can't be good," said Colleen Montague, principal of Wolmer's Girls' School, in a media interview.
She said the administrators had to try hard not to show their fear and to assure the students that they were there to protect them.
Several students were forced to sit examinations at alternative centres yesterday as the ongoing violence caused the closure of some schools.