Quiz mistress for the National Science and Maths Quiz, Dr Elsie Kaufmann, has said she studies the quiz questions just like the students who partake in the quiz do, to enable her make quality judgment on the answer she receives in the course of the quiz.
“I study along with the students because I have to understand every question I ask; because how do I make a judgment on the quality of an answer I’m receiving? So, I need to understand enough to be able to make those kinds of judgment,” she told Moro Awudu on the Executive Breakfast Show (EBS) on Class FM on Monday, 9 July 2018.
The National Science and Maths Quiz which has been in existence since 1993, has suddenly gathered momentum as Ghanaians have begun to show interest in it, with countless sponsors coming on board to support the programme.
This year’s event saw St. Peters emerge winners beating West Africa Senior Secondary School (WASS) with a point while four-time consecutive finalists, Adisadel College (ADISCO) came third in the grand finale.
Dr Kaufman also said she enjoys being the quiz mistress and considers it a great honour. “Is a great honour, I enjoy it, if you see me on set smiling and all that it’s because I’m happy, I’m enjoying what I’m doing, it’s wonderful to interact with so many bright people and I feel like I’m contributing, and, so, it is an honour to be associated with that.”
She noted that being a quiz mistress is “a lot of hard work, it’s a year-long activity, so, when we’re not on set, we’re still gathering questions, we’re meeting every week, there is a team of consultants and it’s a whole lot of work. For quality checks, even after we have received the questions from the consultants, there has to be someone who is responsible for making sure that the questions are right…”
Explaining how the questions are set, Dr Kaufmann said: “A team of consultants sets the questions. There are four subject consultants and then there is me, the general consultant, so, we actually moderate every single question and in a regular 76-contest type of situation like we had this year, we had a total of 5,096 questions and that doesn’t include extra questions for Type B and any problem like replacement of questions but the standard question is 5,096. That’s a whole lot of questions, and, so, we’ll read each and every question, we review which ones are going to make it and which ones are not and then we go ahead and the public sees the outcome of all of them.”
The objective of the National Science & Maths Quiz is to promote the study of the sciences and mathematics, help students develop quick thinking while fostering healthy academic rivalry among senior high schools.
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