This has been a busy week in Hamelengan village. There have been lots of extra people visiting here as this is the week of the Grade 8 school exams.
We have seen the school here in Hamelengan grow and flourish in our almost 10 years of working with the Nukna people. When we first came, it was fairly ‘normal’ to have a school year where only 3 grades were offered (such as 1st, 3rd and 5th) due to a shortage of teachers and classroom space. But now, the school is growing and thriving. Over the past few years they have added grades 7 and 8, as well as built a separate “Elementary” school (for the equivilent of grades 1 and 2). And it’s also exciting that at least half of the teachers are from the Nukna area—something that is rare indeed – usually teachers are brought in from other parts of the country.
In many ways, school here is similar to any school you might find in the US. In many other ways, it’s extremely different. Aside from the lack of electricity in the classrooms, dirt floors and bamboo walls, and school starting with the kids working for half an hour or so cleaning the school grounds (ie: weeding or cutting the soccer field grass with their machetes), one of the most stark differences (in my opinion) is the Grade 8 Exam.
In my home culture, Grade 8 is just one more year in the long 12 years of school. It’s a bit exciting… it’s the finish of the “Middle School” years, where kids leave childhood behind and enter highschool as teens. But there’s nothing terribly important or distinct about Grade 8.
Here, that’s not the case. Every year, about this time, all the grade 8 students here in PNG must take an exam. This exam is of the utmost importance to the students and their families. When the results of the exam come back, the grade 8 students find out whether their school career is over, or whether they can continue on to Grade 9 and beyond. (Grade 9 is not a grade currently taught at the Hamelengan school. For those students who pass the grade 8 exam and continue on to 9th grade, they must go to Derim, a several -days hike from here, where they board and only come home on school holidays.) So this exam is a HUGE thing! (And if they pass and go on to grades 9 and 10, they have to take another big exam at the end of grade 10 to see if they can move on to grades 11 and 12.)
So this week here in Hamelengan the Grade 8 Exam was given. Last year, every single Grade 8 student here in Hamelengan passed the test – 21 out of 21! That was a proud moment for both the students and their teachers, as a 100% pass rate is extremely rare. This year, 23 students took the test. About half of the students aren’t from Hamelengan village, so their families hiked here for the week to support them. Some came from the beach, a 2 day hike from here, and some from over the mountains to the east. All the local families from here in Hamelengan who have Grade 8 students just stayed home this week – no working in their gardens - cooking extra special foods for their kids so that they would have the energy and brain power for the exam. Two of our main co-translators, Simendi and Muransi, have daughters who took the exam this year.
So the village has been overflowing with guests who are staying with relatives and friends so they can encourage and pray for their kids while they take their exams. On the last day, lots of men went to Siang village (a 3-ish hour hike, one-way) to pick up a pig and carry it back for a feast for the kids to celebrate the end of their exams. All the parents pooled their money to buy the pig as a special treat for the students. Once the feast was over, the afternoon ended with prayer, speeches, and gifts such as homemade spears and woven mats for the exam proctor.
Today and tomorrow the village will start to shrink back to it’s ‘normal’ size as parents head back home now that the exam is done. School will continue on through the rest of the school year (following the school year in Australia where the school year starts in Jan and ends in Dec). And the students will wait, probably until January, for their exams to be graded at the educational admin offices in the provincial capital, Lae. Once the grading is completed, the results will be carried back, first by airplane and then by hand over the mountainous jungle trails. Only then will they find out which students are eligible to continue on to grade 9, and which have failed and are finished with schooling for the rest of their lives. Talk about nerve-wracking! But after last’s year’s incredible success, hopes are high that most or all will pass this year too.
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