Students in anguish

The recent announcement of the Cambridge O/A level results on Thursday had left students so devastated that hundreds of them including their families decided to protest outside the National Press Club and D-chowk in Islamabad. The claim put forward by them was that the Cambridge Assessment International Education (CAIE) had unjustly downgraded their results after promising to ensure a fair assessment mechanism in the wake of exam cancellations owing to the pandemic.

CAIE had previously explained that the four-step assessment would include the teachers’ predicted grade for the student, the students’ ranking order, and school reviews in order to come up with a “predicted grade” which would serve as their final result. However, many students believe their predicted results do not reflect such an assessment, instead they were downgraded. They have expressed their outrage on social media over CAIEs “discriminatory” treatment to Pakistani students as compared to students from England and Scotland, only to find out that international students from 160 countries, mostly from Africa and South Asia, had been a victim of the same. For some the situation was so severe that they had received an F in response to their expected grade of A* submitted by the school. Others have asserted that the CAIE is taking advantage of the situation by creating conditions which may force many students to retake their expensive exams.

Thankfully though, the Federal Education Minister Shafqat Mahmood’s plea to CAIE has not gone unnoticed as the exam board has decided to review its grading procedure — the final verdict of which will be announced on Tuesday. While there is a need for the Cambridge International to re-examine many of their policies, it is essential that they provide the students with the opportunity to appeal individually against unfair grading. On the other hand, it is vital that Pakistan work steadfast towards forming its own unified national education system in order to promote fairness and equality, instead of relying on an international curriculum.

Published in The Express Tribune, August 16^th, 2020.

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