Jordanian student Majd Muhammad Malkawi did not expect to excel in high school and obtain the full mark 100%, and to be among the 78 male and female students obtaining the same mark, for the first time in the history of education in the Kingdom.
Majd lives in one of the outskirts of Jordan, in the town of Malka, located in the governorate of Irbid (northern Jordan), and she studies at the Malka Secondary School for Girls (governmental), her results were not believed at first glance, but her father, Engineer Muhammad, confirms his daughter's superiority since her childhood and her ability to concentrate during the study.
Will is the secret of superiority
It was five o'clock in the morning when the aunt told the glory of the family of the results, and the family of Muhammad Malkawi discovered that her daughter had achieved the great goal with the full mark, and Majd’s father expresses his joy by saying, “The number is perfect, the family's feeling is indescribable, great joy, and the tear of excellence is precious and dear, no I can describe how we all felt, but what I did was hug my daughter with pride. "
The student Majd told Al-Jazeera Net that she was studying all days, amid intermittent periods of rest, and that the Corona pandemic, isolation and the death of her grandmother, and the will to excel and succeed were conditions that strengthened her focus and intensified study hours, with help in some special remedial lessons.
Majd - who intends to study medicine at a public university - refers to the role of her teacher and teachers in strengthening her will as well as her classmates, in addition to following them through distance education, and she does not deny their great merit in her superiority.
The Jordanian Ministry of Education announced the results of the general secondary education for the year 2020 this Saturday morning after the success of more than 96 thousand students with a general success rate of 56.5%, the success rate in the scientific branch reached 74.5%, the literary branch was 46% and the industrial branch reached 30.9%, while 71 students achieved an average of 100 % In the scientific branch, and 7 in the literary branch, where one student out of every thousand students in the scientific branch, and one student out of every 13 thousand students in the literary branch got a full mark.
Full mark .. but not medicine
"I will not study medicine, rather I will study digital economics or artificial intelligence." This is what the student Musab Muhammad Ghazal, who has a full mark in the scientific branch, wants after a simple study that reached most days only 4 hours, but it increased after the Corona crisis.
In turn, Engineer Muhammad Ghazal - Musab's father - says that the family expected the superiority of their son, but did not ask him to achieve this, and left him studying in a simple and comfortable atmosphere, far from psychological pressures in a house that nothing came to him due to the presence of a general high school student, stressing that his son did not happen He received private lessons (tutoring), but he used to go to his teachers in his private school.
The first though tired
The student Hamad Al-Enezi, a resident of the village of Balama in the Mafraq Governorate (north of the Kingdom), used to travel during his education from his home to the Zarqa Governorate, interrupting by public transport 60 km, to join the agricultural specialization, which he preferred to be a bridge for him to study agricultural engineering, despite the distance and effort And fatigue achieved his dream to be the first in specialization in the Kingdom at a rate of 98.7%.
Amidst his joy, Al-Enezi talks to Al-Jazeera Net about his fatigue, which he communicated with during his two-year studies (first and second secondary), so that the travel time lasts more than an hour, so that fatigue goes away and waits in front of the moment of announcing the results and seeing his parents' joy in their eyes, confirming that his studies did not exceed 3-4 hours Daily, with high concentration and regulation of time.
A full sign with an identity card ... but!
The outstanding student Batoul Fawzi Al-Mousa, who received the full mark, is a Syrian refugee, she lives in Jerash Governorate (north of the Kingdom), and studied high school at Qafqafa Secondary School for Girls, waiting to complete her dream of studying medicine in Jordan, but she ran into a bitter reality, as refugees are not allowed to compete for seats. Government, waiting for a charitable organization to help her fulfill her dream.
Batoul, across Al Jazeera Net, appeals to all charities and associations to help her complete her dream, and she believes that God will help her for that. She also believed that she will obtain the full mark, stressing that her insistence on studying 7 hours a day and excelling despite all the difficulties she faced is the secret of her success.
Batoul points out that she dreams of completing a study of medicine in a university in the Kingdom, but that the cost of that within the parallel study is impossible due to the deterioration of her family's living situation, as the family can hardly secure sustenance at the time with the presence of a son studying engineering as well.
Batoul, Hamad, Musab, Majd and other top performers in Jordan reaped the fruits of their efforts during an entire academic year in which schools and private study centers were closed due to the Coronavirus pandemic, but this strengthened their determination and will to excel, succeed and obtain the full mark.
Unprecedented results
The results of the general secondary education in Jordan were surprising to the Jordanian street, as no student during the education process witnessed the obtaining of the full mark, except for one student last year, while 78 male and female students this year obtained a score of 100%, which prompted the Jordanian Minister of Education Tayseer Al-Nuaimi to provide a justification for this, as he said during a press conference on Saturday morning that any results of any exam or test must be read in their time context and the circumstances that accompanied the school year of sit-ins and the Corona pandemic.
The minister added that the nature of the questions is an important factor in those who reach the full mark, through objective tests that tolerate speculation, a wider comprehensiveness of the content, and no subjectivity in correction, asking, "Why is there an upper limit for the mark? Doesn't that mean that some students will likely achieve it?" And in light of this type of questions, it is expected that a number of students will obtain full marks.
Al-Nuaimi explained that the marks and success rates are high all over the world this year, and that many countries were unable to hold their exams and resorted to statistical models to estimate students' scores based on their previous performance evaluation stations, which was not possible educationally and socially in our case.
For his part, the coordinator of the National Campaign for Student Rights (They Slaughtered Us), Fakher Daas, believes that the results of the high school exam for the current year are not normal.
Daas said that the ministry was tied for justification - during the press conference - more than anything else, and that the Jordanian street was unable to accept these results, especially since all the excuses that the minister talked about did not answer the most important question, "Did the exam reflect the level of students or not? Can we build on it in reading the quality of education and its outcomes?
Daas adds to Al-Jazeera Net that there has been an influx of high school results during the last 4 years, and this is not a coincidence, rather we fear that it is part of a systematic plan that seeks to destroy the high school exam, to be an entry point for the implementation of the decision of the educational development conference held in 2015, and the strategies of education seeking Not to keep the Tawjihi as the only criterion for university admission, in order to enshrine the privatization of public universities.