A meeting was held at the Ministry of Education to discuss the fate of official examinations, but according to information from MTV, nothing came of it, and the discussion was postponed to next week when Education Minister Abbas Halabi will hold a press conference on the matter. In a conversation with "Radio Lebanon," Minister Halabi confirmed that regarding the meeting he would hold today, Friday, with the educational family to discuss the optional subjects and the unified exam for the "Broufieh" certificate due to the situation in the south, he stated, "The south is a bleeding wound for the teachers, students, and parents who are suffering there due to the barbaric attacks of the Israeli enemy that daily targets safe areas, civilians, and crops, employing a scorched earth policy." He emphasized that "the south is at the heart of Lebanon, and we cannot at all think about examinations or any other educational or national issue separate from what is happening there," according to "Al-Markaziyya."
Halabi noted that "for some time we announced that as long as the situation in the south remains as it is, without a horizon for ending the suffering of the students there, we will take into account the level of achievement reached by the students, and we have opened response centers and launched remote education to compensate for what the students missed in terms of lessons and learning opportunities, while things continue as usual in other Lebanese territories." He said, "This matter led to an impression among the families in the south, which does not even exist in our thinking, that we are separating the south from Lebanon, or as if we are conducting a first-degree certificate and a second-degree certificate, which is not true."
He continued, "We have stopped at this issue; that’s why I called for today’s meeting with the Educational Center, the General Directorate of Education, and all responsible parties for consultation, because we must not neglect the perspective of the southerners and must think seriously about it, which preserves the level of the certificate we are keen to restore dignity to, and on the other hand, there is a reality on the ground, especially since we are in exceptional circumstances. Whenever we face a similar problem, we try to find ways that lead to the operation of the educational facility naturally."
Regarding students' demands for optional subjects versus teachers' requests to conduct exams as usual, Halabi pointed out that "the teachers’ associations and unions of both private and public education consider that the school year was normal, so there is no need for optional subjects, while students have become accustomed in recent years to the existence of such subjects, and they found it difficult without them this year." He confirmed that "there is no need for optional subjects in the exams as long as the school year has been normal," explaining that "the choice of optional subjects was made in previous years because they were not normal academic years, but this year everything was normal in both public and private education, and the Lebanese University and all education institutions."
He indicated that "the students’ outcry is heard in the Ministry of Education and cannot be ignored, especially since it comes with many appeals he receives," promising students that he would revisit the matter with the pillars of the educational family to discuss what can be done in this regard.
About today's meeting, he said: "Educational consultation requires inviting the pillars of the educational family, including teachers’ representatives; the official examinations will be conducted, but how they will be conducted depends on listening to the educators’ opinions during the meeting because the subject of the exam is not an administrative decision but an educational one, and the final format will be based on consultation with them."
Concerning the unified exam for the "Broufieh" certificate, Minister Halabi pointed out that "procedural decisions will be issued to explain the meaning of the unified exam to people, and to inform school administrations how to conduct it; these decisions have been prepared and will be issued subsequently soon, perhaps today if they are ready."
He continued, "There is also a perspective that says that schools are not ready. The Ministry of Education has created an electronic application that will be distributed to schools to train them to receive exam questions on the specified day, and all that is required from these schools is to receive them, print them, and distribute them to the students. This is not the automatic way of examinations; we are conducting a kind of testing. There are also more than one perspective being discussed; moving suddenly from a new system without training on it may lead schools to exploit it and promote all students, and it could be an opportunity for all commercial schools to sell grades."
He added, "What we say is that there are security controls for this matter; one of them is that public and private schools have sent grades in advance to the Ministry of Education, so someone with a grade of 11 or 12 will not suddenly have a grade of 20; it is difficult to manipulate these results. However, this matter is still under discussion."
Regarding the failure of the teachers who monitored the second-round examinations last year to receive their dues, Halabi clarified that there are two types of dues, one that the state budget approved, which has been paid, and the other type pertains to dues resulting from promises from UNICEF to cover the costs of the examinations, which have not been paid by them so far, and we are in ongoing discussions with them about this matter to resolve it, and it seems there is a lack of funding. Today, I will receive a delegation from UNICEF to discuss the topic."
On the request of the Orthodox Council to modify the Easter holiday, he pointed out that "many people I know have turned into pious individuals and have started requesting this matter. Honestly, I asked if Thursday is a religiously counted day, and I was told that if it were so, the state would consider it a holiday. As we know, we need every teaching day. It was never intended to infringe upon the rights of a sect I appreciate and respect, and it was never intended to imply that I have fallen short; rather, I saw that there was a reaction confined to a single point: how you granted the Catholics and Maronites Thursday and did not provide it to the Orthodox, and this does not have religious consideration but equality. It is the legitimate right of the respected Orthodox community that I did not deal with them equally. To avoid any misunderstanding, I will issue today a memo to close schools from Wednesday until Monday evening."
