The standard of the paper is comparable to that of previous years. ', usually the essay topics are within the competence of school certificate of candidates: letter writing, magazine article, debate and story-telling  The comprehension and summary passages are on topics which the candidates should be able to understand easily and tackle without difficulty.
Contrary to expectation, the performance of the candidates is awfully poor. Some of the candidates scored zero in the whole paper, having failed to write an answer that can earn a single mark in any section of the' paper. It appears that a good number of schools registered illiterate andunqualified candidates for this test.