At the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, Pakistan witnessed an exponential increase in the cases of the infection. Therefore, the government decided to shut all educational institutions across the country indefinitely. Naturally, this was a cause for concern for many students, including those who were planning to take the CIEs.
However, as cases around the world also started drastically increasing, Cambridge too decided to cancel the exams and instead opted to award students with “predicted” grades based on their recent performance in school, since this was the only way they could judge students without them having to give the exam. The news was not taken well by many because they felt that the set criteria gave an unfair advantage to some students. However, there was nothing that could be done. On August 11, when Cambridge released their “predicted” results, the students were left devastated. There were numerous cases where pupils who were top performers throughout the year received ‘B’ and ‘C’ grades and many others were awarded with a much lower grade than they expected. In retaliation, the students decided to exercise their fundamental right to protest. Throughout Pakistan, thousands of students marched on the streets to protest that these unfair grades would destroy their future. Facing immense pressure from students, teachers and the government, Cambridge finally decided to revise all grades such that no student’s grade would be lower than his predicted grade.
Some people, however, were angered by this decision too since they felt that many schools inflated their students’ predicted grades, hence the new grades would still be unfair. It seems that no matter what the board does, they will receive some form of backlash.
Mushtaq Alvi
Lahore
Published in The Express Tribune, September 6th, 2020.
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