O, A level students heave sigh of relief

Islamabad : In a late Monday night development, Minister for Education Shafqat Mehmood took to the social media to dismiss the anxiety of O and A level students by sharing Cambridge International’s decision to the effect that grade for the May-June 2020 series would not be less than predicted grades sent by schools. Moreover, in cases where a previously issued grade was higher than the predicted grade, the higher grade would stand.

“Great news. Our tireless effort has been successful,” Shafqat tweeted, much to the joy of students who had been under extreme emotional stress ever since the announcement of their results, which they alleged, were unfair, discriminatory, and skewed, and not the least compatible with their past performance and expectations.

“We have decided that grades we issue for the June 2020 series will not be lower than the predicated grade submitted by the school. Where a grade we issued last week was higher than the predicted grade, the higher grade will stay,” Cambridge announced.

New grades will be issued “as soon as possible,” Cambridge announced, adding, “We will also share the new grades with universities and admissions organization as soon as we can in the coming days. We will post the new grades to Cambridge International Direct.”

Acknowledging the hard work of teachers in terms of gathering evidence and working out predicted grades, Cambridge International conceded having viewed a significant portion of the evidence schools used to make their predictions.

“In the meantime, in order to provide immediate certainty to students, schools can inform them of the predicted grades they submitted to us,” Cambridge announced, promising further updates on the process today (August 19). It is hence obligatory for all private schools to share the predicted grades of students with them; earlier on, teachers had been taking refuge behind the pretext of having signed an undertaking preventing such disclosure.

Cambridge International had cancelled its May-June 2020 series worldwide on account of the Coronavirus pandemic and had decided to grade students against multiple benchmarks such as their predicted grades, school review, ranking order, and standardisation.