Students of St Michael’s school protest outside Karachi Grammar School’s college campus on Tuesday. PHOTO: AYESHA MIR/EXPRESS
The parents of some students who will have to sit the O’ Level Pakistan Studies and Islamiyat papers again have threatened to take legal action against the Cambridge International Examinations (CIE) board for its “cruelty and injustice”.
On June 3 - 17 days after the last paper for the two subjects - the board posted an announcement on its website, saying that there had been a security breach and students would have to sit for the exams again on June 13 and June 14.
On Tuesday morning, the parents of Karachi Grammar School (KGS) students met the institution’s administration and drew up a list of points to put forward to the exam board. Only this much was discussed during the meeting. But after emerging from the school, a couple of irate parents even warned that they would take legal action against the board. While talking to The Express Tribune, S*, a concerned parent, said, “They have no right to subjugate us and our children like this. The board’s officials are saying the security breach took place outside Pakistan, so why is it that only students of this country have to sit exams again? Some of us are even willing to take the legal route.”
Z, another KGS student’s mother, said the ordeal had taken a toll on her daughter. “She was crying all evening after finding out her efforts had gone to waste as a result of the board’s mismanagement. In fact, this was pretty much the response of all her friends,” she said. “And now CIE’s officials aren’t even answering the phone! They’ve been very vague about the whole thing. When they say ‘security breach’, what exactly do they mean? Have they lost the answer scripts?”
For its part, British Council, which conducts the board’s examination in Pakistan, said that an investigation into the matter has already been launched and the findings will be shared by Wednesday (today).
Tariq Rashid Quraishi, another parent who attended the meeting, said they want the inquiry to be transparent and clear. The results should be clearly communicated via the media.
“We’ve also asked them to explain why it took 17 days for the board to announce that the students would have to sit the papers again,” he said. “It is also hard for the parents to conceive how four papers scheduled on four different dates could have been leaked.”
Quraishi said that he, along with other parents, have asked the board to mark the answer scripts which the students have already handed in and grade them for it first. “Then the students’ grades for the papers they sat for again should be correlated with the old ones. If there hasn’t been a drastic drop in a student’s letter grade - say from an A* to an A - then he or she should be assigned the higher one.” He said parents are anxious that their children might not be able to do as well as they did in May because of the schedule - all four exams in two days.
Other concerns which parents brought up was the fact that some children are abroad and will have to fly in from their vacations and the fact that some students may have already discarded the notes and the board’s preparation material is insufficient.
St Michael’s school students protest outside KGS
A little over a dozen St Michael’s school students gathered outside KGS’ college campus at Boat Basin to protest against CIE’s decision. Though a Facebook notification about the “peace walk from KGS to St Michael’s school” had been sent out the night before and received a respectable response in the cyber world, not many turned up.
Those who did make it sat on the road outside the school, chanting slogans for justice. F, a girl holding one of the banners, said, “The CIE must realise that we aren’t mentally prepared to take these exams the way we sat for them back in May. They should just mark our previous answer scripts and assign us a grade.” She added that if the board insists that students sit for the papers again, then it should at least consider rescheduling them for even later.
Even one of the parents joined in. “The board’s mismanagement is unprecedented. It should realise that it isn’t just the students but entire households which have been affected,” said Muhammad Shahid Qureshi. “When a student is preparing for the exams at home - he or she is treated like royalty by the rest of the family. Everyone at home is fussing over and rooting for the student. The entire household is the support system and it takes effort to create the right atmosphere at home for students.”
*Names withheld on request
Published in The Express Tribune, June 5th, 2013.
COMMENTS (27)
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Your system is a failed one, you want to have a merit certificate from UK, so follow the rule, why making fuss of this?
@ Observer .. they sue Cambridge and not govt of Pakistan because many of them evade their taxes and the money they save they give to Cambridge. Only solution to the problem is more investment in local education sector and end to parallel education systems
This is so jokes! Would you rather settle for an aveage B or C? Just go and study! These papers were super easy back when I wrote them 9 years ago. This can only make things better. Respect the CIE if you wanna study their system. Otherwise, its not too hard to get into the matriculation system.
Okay, first off, people need to stop making such a big deal about these exams. There is something rather nerve-wracking about how much hoopla there is right now surrounding this issue. I remember that awful incompetent feeling while going through these exams and waking up at 3 am consistently even after giving my exams thinking I'd missed my exam. It's not a fun time, and parents often make it worse because maybe in some ways, it is their insecurities showing through more than their own children's. I did well on my O and As, but my god, that period of actually giving them was not fun, and a lot of it is because elders around you make it seem like the end of the world if you don't do well. That attitude needs to change. Children should not feel so frazzled when faced with the possibility of giving an exam again.
There is research on standardized tests like GRE and GMAT that suggests that taking them multiple times can increase your score because you are slightly used to the test and can better overcome the anxiety attached to it. And these kids are first timers, so hopefully they would do better. As for the whole "oh I wasted millions on tuition" - tuitions can never help a child score better unless the child studies. The money was wasted from the get-go, but these parents are too scared to really let their children discover their own abilities. The whole insistence on how these kids would do okay since they've had so much time away from these subjects is a little sad. Unless they rote-learned everything (in which case they were likely to get a mediocre grade anyway), they should do fine on these exams. Their minds have not been wiped clean once they gave the exams, if they actually studied, then some of it should be easy to recall.
Why don't these parents sue the government of Pakistan for failing to provide a decent system of education.
In general, the Pakistani students suffer from a lack of real education which becomes apparent when they go abroad and compete with kids from India and Bangladesh.
Teaching Islamiyat as a subject tells me that these kids are being fed a diet of fabricated stories.
Is there any aspect of Pakistan that is not in disarray? Everytime it's a story about another major screwup.
Fix your education system.
Come on kids, grow up! It was just O levels and it has negligible effect on your future. I got into the best college in the country with AACCCCCC
Pak government should ditch all external exam systems and have a parallel system running here. It will save our country precious foreign exchange and also give more control to the intellectuals in this country to influence on the direction of the education. India has its own system and nobody does O Levels / A levels over there. It's recognised all over the world!
We have the best intellectuals and teachers. Why do we have to rely on external examiners to set-up exam papers and
Put an end to corruption and millions of pounds of foreign exchange will be saved!
Disillusioned people, when you sit for an exam for CIE and become subject to rules and regulations of the examining board they have the right to cancel examination results or require a re-sit in order to maintain the quality and standard of the CIE. Pakistan has to resit the exam because these two subjects are primarily given only in Pakistan. Also the paper codes ensure that the exam if breached only affects particular areas or regions. Each exam has three versions. Plus, The CIE has the right to request students to resit the exam based on no reason at all. If people are complaining that there children might not perform equally well in the resit have to understand that the exams measure knowledge and grasp of the subject, which should be replicatable in a standardised exam that CIE are.
So these kids are crying over re-siting a single paper? Meanwhile, thousands of aspirants of CSS Examinations in Faisalabad have accepted their fate and preparing for re-examination.
Accept it and move on. That is the only solution to maintain fairness in examinations.
An odd one. First of all, no offence but the fact is Pak studies and Islamiyat should not be mandatory and should not have any significance in the grand scheme of things. Second, the british system is poor as is and students should be asking for a shift to the IB system. Most students will forget and move on after A levels. They will not make any efforts to improve things for their junirs and future generations. Also if the students have such an issue with this matter, they should show up for any protests that they organize. And yes, o level students will not believe anyone when they are told that these exams shouldnt warrant stress so it is a worry for them. Cambridge should be transparent with its reports. A poor showing all round.
@FF: you don't need to be ' rich enough' to study in KGS, lets not be judgemental.
@doom: every exam result is a stepping stone towards getting into the next part of your schooling , great o level grades means getting into a great institution for a- levels,and getting good a level results means getting into a good college and so on and so forth. Yes when you look back at it 25 yrs down the line at some point the grades aren't as important but right now at this stage each grade is important for the next best possible level to be achieved.
@Rehan: On the contrary the Pak Studies and Islamiyat papers ARE written outside. They are taken as subjects not as actual history or religion OWNED by Pakis.
I do agree with doom,o' levels grades hardly matter.When I gave my o' levels Islamiat and Pakistan studies I was like ''THANK GOD I AM DONE'',so its a kind of a thing where you don't want to re appear in these exams.This is a good chance for those students who were not really prepared;in fact all students have a good chance to improve their grades.Although its not really easier task of giving same papers again;getting used to the Cambridge environment will help the students in the future.o' levels grades wont count that much,the main thing is admission entry test in your respective university..
The students have my sympathy. When studying for exams one spends several months building up to a peak, and when they are over the student goes into a several week relaxation period overcoming the ordeal. In this case, due to the incompetence of the examination board, the students are expected repeat the ordeal again, and no young person should be expected to do so. I would hope that the people responsible for the exam debacle (CIE) are seriously brought to book. They are obviously incompetent.
@ FF .. the Cambridge exam organizers get paid for their services. Your logic is weird, reason of poor performance of local education system is presumably lack of investment in education sector. Cambridge board gets paid huge sums of money by Pakistanis who mostly not even pay their taxes. People who pay money for a service have a right to complain if they dont get what is advertised
A couple of decades ago, when I was sitting my o-levels, there was rumour that some big shot had paid to have the exam papers flown in from Singapore, where the exam had been held six hours earlier. The centre in question, Aitchison, was blacklisted at the time. Can this not be done in this case as well?
Security breaches have happened before and will continue to happen - why should the masses pay for the actions of a select handful who feel they are above the law?
Looking back now...my message to all these kids and parents: O levels grades hardly matter. It's not worth the fuss. I can imagine kids thinking it is the end of the world that there grade might slip from A* to A (heavens!) but their parents should know better.
And besides, for most people having to resit the exam would improve their grade (unless the first one was a total fluke). It's like you've had a practice run now, and you've already prepared fully. Now all the prep these kids get to do is bonus - like being told right before the exam "ok you have 15 more days to prepare". I would be like yay!
nothing good is going to come out of these protests...they should study instead and not waste time!
"Why are only Pakistani students having to re-sit the exams?"
Because Pakistan Studies is only taken as a Cambridge Exam in Pakistan........the parent is clearly rich enough to send her son/daughter to KGS but not smart enough to figure that out by herself? Yikes.
Complaining about a foreign exam service when your own countries education system is an abysmal failure. Priceless.
Newsflash! The British aren't here to solve your problems. Might want to start spending some time reforming your own system instead of complaining about inconsistencies that occur once in how many years in the Cambridge system?
our protesters make a weak claim, why change your name to protect your identity if youre planning to sue anyway?
Poor kids....but here I would like to highlight the ordeal of students giving board examination under Karachi boards...security breach is a norm.
Instead of wasting their time "fussing" over this decision, these students should stop their whining and channel their energy towards studying. Students in the Cambridge system are taught Pak Studies and Islamiat since grade 1. If they believe that after 10 years of studying these two subjects, they've forgotten everything about it in just a mere 17 days then they have a lot more to worry about. Be thankful for the opportunity you've been given, considering this was the first time you were giving these papers. If you work hard then surely you might find these retakes to be a blessing in disguise. Good luck!
How else are supposed to react? its not CIE's fault. stop crying like little babies. u shud feel gud tht they are actually taking steps to ensure the fairness of the exams. Otherwise o-levels will end up like our sindh board!
@S: No one outside of Pakistan writes examinations for Islamiyat and Pakistan Studies. -__-
This is cruelty and injustice? This happens all the time in the UK on whose system these exams are based, stop protesting and go and study. Later atleast one can claim that there were mitigating circumstances.
No suo motu so far?