Recent security breach does not surprise people at an Islamabad school. PHOTO: FILE
ISLAMABAD:
Some 20,000 ‘O’ Level students were asked this week by the Cambridge International Examinations (CIE) to retake examinations for two subjects following a security breach – a mismanagement instance which some students and parents claim is hardly new on part of the CIE.
The Islamiat O level exam scripts of 66 students belonging to the Global School of Integrated Studies (GSIS) were misplaced by CIE during transit in 2010, The Express Tribune has learnt.
One of the students, Imdad Butt, informed that his Islamiat exam was lost by the organisation. The lost script was ‘graded’ by the CIE through an assessment formula, as were the other 65 misplaced scripts.
The A level student still remembers the day when the news of his exam’s loss came to him. His parents say, “Imad was playing football when he heard about his Islamiat exam. He fell to the ground in shock and received a backbone injury.”
Imdad’s school had turned down the CIE and the British Council’s offer to allow students to reappear in the exam free of charge. Quratulain Rizvi, principal of GSIS, took the stance that students should not have to write exams again.
Then Deputy Director Qualification of CIE, Anne Gutch, and Director Assessment Services, Di Palmer, in separate emails, acknowledged that the loss of papers was “unsatisfactory and very upsetting” and is also “extremely rare.”
The emails said that it was a “fact of the life that when we are handling millions of scripts each year it does happen from time to time that a very small number are lost in transit.”
The emails added that “we are also happy to offer the opportunity to take the examination in the next session free of charge.”
When the school administration protested the loss of scripts, CIE sent the grades with 29 students being awarded the lowest grade of U, 10 students the E grade, 11 a D grade, six a B grade and only one student an A+ grade. The school protested the results once again and the CIE sent another list of grades. This time, nine students were given U grade, five took E grade, 12 took D grade, nine took C grade, 19 took B grade, six took A grade while nine A+ grade.
The GSIS principal was dissatisfied with these results and said, “It is highly regrettable that the forecast grades system was not followed.” In such situations, Rizvi said, the rule is to award grades on the basis of forecast grades sent to CIE by schools.
However, the University of Cambridge officials wrote to her, saying: “It is never possible to issue results that reproduce forecast grades as you have suggested because the results have to be based on the evidence of the candidates’ work which we have.”
A divisional bench of the Islamabad High Court recently rejected Imad and his fellow students’ plea against O level grades on the ground of its limited jurisdiction in this specific matter. The parents of the victims are planning to approach the apex court for help.
Published in The Express Tribune, June 8th, 2013.
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“Imad was playing football when he heard about his Islamiat exam. He fell to the ground in shock and received a backbone injury.” Seriously? Seems like a 8 year old wrote this article.