On June 11th, young citizens of Beirut gathered around the Ministry of Education to protest their rights to sit their official exams, known worldwide as Exit Exams. The crowd wasn’t the usual mass of adults protesting for their financial rights, but a group of adolescent teenagers, aged 13-14, protesting to be able to take the annual government exams.
Each year young adults in the 9th and 12th grade, prepare all year long to take the state-run examination at the end of their educational cycle, which consists of all the studied subjects.
As we previously shared with you, these exit exams are decisive in authorizing the Lebanese students to pass over to the next educational cycle; the 2nd official exam in the Lebanese Curriculum, when successfully achieved, is their only access key to university education.
Unfortunately, many hardworking students this year had to pay a very unfair price and be prohibited from partaking in the official examinations. Their respective schools had failed to provide them with the mandatory examination cards from the Ministry of Education.
It is to mention that the official exams have kicked off today, June 12th, for middle school students, and the secondary school students will initiate theirs on June 18th.
Minister of Education Akram Chehayeb discussed with President Michel Aoun that the reason the Ministry didn’t issue permittable access examination cards is due to the fact that the schools are simply unlicensed. He claimed that some seven schools weren’t eligible for the official license, causing their students to pay the price.
In what seems like a compromise, the ministry of education has decided to eradicate the unlicensed schools this year while allowing their students to partake in the exams during the second round of the exams.
The second round is usually done for students who would fail to pass the first time, giving them a second chance to re-study in a short period of time and re-sit the exams.
Live coverage was taken outside the ministry while the students and their parents protested until the decision was made. Students were also joined by their teachers who also took it as an opportunity to continuously protest their wage delays.
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