What your Children Need to Know During Exams
By Dickson Tumuramye
The season of exams comes with a
lot of pressure and anxiety mostly on schools, students and parents. Yet it is a
time to assure someone that your hard work has not been in vain. If someone was
reading and concentrating on his/her studies, this should be a time to rejoice
that he/she has come to a final level of seeing that off.
However, most of the time,
schools and students are so much on competition and in the end, want to cheat exams.
We have been reading in the media that the circuit of examination malpractice is
big and involves many people including school owners, headteachers, Teachers,
some police people, security guards, some UNEB officials, parents, and learners.
All these should be custodians of integrity but instead, are the ones breaking
the law; leaking the exams, copying for children, etc.
Our children need to learn that there
is no sweet without sweat. Nothing good comes on a silver plate without any good
effort undertaken. Success is made but not bought. The corruption tendencies we
see now in our society started slowly like that and it is what is consuming it up.
And cheating exams is as big as robbery in a bank.
Therefore, let us desist them
from cheating exams. If it is parents involved in assisting/supporting them, it
is as well as teaching them that when you get a job anywhere, don’t forget to
cheat the company/organization. It is normal to cheat and get what you want
easily even after spending millions of monies on it. It’s like saying it is good
to be working on something that must yield results at the end of the day but
you can chill and expect external assistance. There is nothing good at
The same children that engage in
exams malpractices are the same people that will be bribing or seeking bribes
tomorrow to get/offer a job. They presume that society is all about exchange
for what you should deserve to get even when it is your right to have it.
Let us sit them down and refrain
them from dare think about cheating exams. What they are sowing now in cheating
exams will be reaped somewhere else at a time when they need real help. They
will not reverse the past and this may cost them their lives even.
They have been reading for these
exams for the last 10 years(primary) or 14-16 years (high school) or more years
if at a university level but one-minute of malpractice can destroy all those
years and time they have struggled hard and invested to reach where they are.
We have seen many cheating schools fail to receive their results. Malpractice
in life makes you lose your sense of direction and you can never celebrate your
success and achievements.
They need to regularly pray and
put their trust in God. It is God who gives us wisdom but is our ability to
seek knowledge through our hard work. Therefore, prayer and their concentration
make all possible for them to excel in their exams and life. They need to know
that you too pray for them and you will always be behind their success.
Encourage your children to
control exam pressure and anxiety. It
will deny them time to concentrate well. All they need is to be sober-minded and
recall what they have been revising. They need to read a question more than
once before attempting it. They should not panic.
Desist also from involving
yourself in promoting any form of malpractice for your children as a parent.
There is a saying that “he who steals while carrying his/her baby is
demonstrating to it to do the same.” What you sow in them today is what you
reap from them tomorrow.
The writer is a child advocate
and a parenting coach, Kampala.
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