Revision of papers

To suit his argument Frank Ventura (October 24) prefers to omit parts of my letter of September 15. If he had read my letter well, I had stated two reasons why a revision of paper was applied for, the first being that I felt that the grade given was unfair. It would have saved him a lot of time and unnecessary explanations, if he had read the letter carefully.

Having, since then, received the report on the revision of paper in question, I would like to comment on the third paragraph of his letter where he stated that "a brief report of the findings is drawn up by the additional marker".

Believe me, it could not be briefer. Two essays were completely ignored - namely "Tess of the D'Urbervilles" and "The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie" - no remarks at all! The remarks regarding the comprehension were done in only one sentence - "The comprehension is average". It must have taken the additional marker a Herculean effort to write that! Yes, Mr Ventura, I agree with you there. The report is truly brief!

It is beside the point that Mr Ventura tries to justify the fact that the fee of Lm15 is not too costly by quoting fees by foreign universities to Maltese students. I applied to the University of Malta and I am a Maltese citizen. My point is that whatever the Matsec fees are we are not being given a good service.

I appreciate that lack of human resources might be a problem in delivering the revision of papers on time but I do expect that a report should be more informative and not as dismissive as the one I received. I could always provide Mr Ventura with a copy of this report for verification.

All I can say is that applying for a revision of papers is a waste of money and futile. One does not have the right to see the original paper in the first place, it is next to impossible to have the grade changed (as the saying in Maltese goes Kappell ma jmejjilx lil iehor) and, to crown it all, we get these sorry excuses for reports!

As to what Emanuel Abela, director, Department of Information, said in his letter about examination centres (October 3), I would like to confirm that the incident of water seeping onto exam papers and desks happened during the O- level session of May, 2001.

With regard to the availability of fans during exams, the fan provided was so inadequate that two candidates fell ill during the English A-level session and had to be given extra time after the exam to make up for the time lost while they recovered.

I would like to thank him for informing me that the sum of Lm127,615 has been invested in the restoration and renovation of examination centres. Knowing how quickly and efficiently things are done in Malta, I will believe that when I actually see the renovation done. In the meantime, our students will keep suffering and have to bear the consequences themselves.