The chemistry exam provokes controversy in the Sudanese certificate

Books- Khalifa Jaafar Ali- under the title “The Chemistry Exam for the Sudanese Certificate 3/7/2025: Double suffering in light of displacement and asylum”

Saying: On Thursday, 3 July 2025, students of the Sudanese certificate sat to take the chemistry exam, in an atmosphere dominated by sadness, tension and psychological pressure, not only because of the nature of the exam, but also as a result of the harsh human conditions that the country has been going through for months.

Sudan today is not like its previous era. The country is in a state of displacement and collective asylum, according to local reports and United Nations reports, which confirmed that the vast majority of families and students have lived in shelters or in neighboring countries after they fled the scourge of the war that imposed on them instability. In such circumstances, it is logical that students be mitigated, or a review of exams and their content, but what happened today was the exact opposite.

The chemistry exam came in eight complete papers, loaded with questions that most students and teachers described as extremely difficult and complicated, even for those who are tested in a stable and prepared environment. And some teachers said: “A test of this difficulty has not passed before.”

It is not only limited to students in the areas of displacement and asylum, but even students in safe areas did not prepare for them the appropriate environment, as they suffer from frequent electricity sectors, and water shortage due to the continuous targeting by the militia of the main stations of electricity and sabotage that affected all transformers, over that of general living pressures that greatly affect their ability to focus and prepare. Add to that the pressures that the parents are going through, which exhausted their shoulders from the high tuition fees for three times, as well as the exam fees.

How are all these students, who face inhumane conditions, are expected to deal with an exam of this size and this difficulty?

Many students came out of the examination halls in a state of psychological collapse, some of whom could not complete the paper, and others crying about their feeling of lethality and injustice.

Now, students live in a sustainable fear while keeping other materials on top of which is physics and mathematics, as fears are increasing from the difficulty of the upcoming exams, in the absence of any preparation or support for them.

Many parents and teachers expressed their dissatisfaction, stressing that the examination of the exam did not take into account the minimum human or psychological reality of students, but some went to describe the exam as “my revenge” and “non -professional”, asking: Is this exam really put in place by specialists? Or is there a state of deliberate ignorance of the suffering of students?

Unfortunately, the Ministry of Education has not yet issued any statement that explains the reasons for this level of difficulty, or justify ignoring the Cairo conditions in which students live. This increases the feeling of students and their families that they were left alone in the face of an unknown educational fate.

The chemistry exam today is not just an academic exam, but rather a blatant indication of the absence of educational and human justice, and a distress cry that everyone who has a conscience should hear. Education does not have to turn into a torture, especially in a country that fights its people in order to survive.