Only 600 A and O level students get A*

IBCC equivalence certificates granted to the 20,000 A and O level students who applied for them.

LAHORE: The Inter Board Committee of Chairmen (IBCC) equivalence certificates have been granted to the 20,000 A and O level students who applied for them. However, only 600 of those students have received one or more A* in their results, an IBCC official told The Express Tribune.

An IBCC official, on condition of anonymity, told the Tribune that the Cambridge International Examination (CIE) had agreed to implement IBCC’s demands to introduce grade A* in the General Certificate Examination (GCE) and to not show details of grades related to percentage in the A and O level statement results.

He said that although only 600 students had been granted equivalence certificates after the introduction of grade A* in the GCE, the IBCC has not compiled data breaking down the number of A* grades each student obtained.

Some students, he said, got only one A* while others got two or three A*s.

CIE country manager Uzma Yousaf told The Express Tribune that a summary of the total number of high achievers would be released in January 2011. She said that it was on the Pakistan government’s request the CIE had displayed the grades related to percentage on the A and O level statement results. This, she said, was done only for Pakistan.

An IBCC official said that it was expected that more Pakistani students would get A* than the current total awarded.

He said that in 2005 the IBCC demanded that the CIE introduce the grade A* in its GCE as it had been introduced in its other examinations like the General Certificate of Secondary Examination (GCSE) and Intermediate General Certificate of Secondary Examination (IGCSE).

He said that prior to June 2010, the CIE would show grade related percentage. He said this confused students and many had taken the IBCC to court on that count. The IBCC, he said, asked the CIE not to continue with this practice and instead only show the grade, like A* or A, on the result statement.

The CIE, he said, has done exactly that in its recent issue of result statements of A and O levels. The official said that IBCC has set 90 per cent marks as grade A*, 85 marks as grade A, 75 marks as Grade B, 65 marks as grade C. Grades D and E are 55 and 45 marks, respectively.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 3^rd, 2010.