This time the May-June ‘O’ and ‘A’ level examinations have been canceled

News Desk: The ‘O’ level examination of the secondary level of English medium education and the ‘A’ level examination of the higher secondary level have been canceled. The test was scheduled for May-June. The name of this session is 'Summer'. Due to the existing Corona situation, the UK (UK) government has decided to cancel the examination in its own country.

In continuation of this, the examination of the mentioned session of the British curriculum conducted in different countries of the world including Bangladesh has also been canceled. However, the test is scheduled for October-November. If any student wants to take the test then he can take part. Earlier, last year's summer session exams were also canceled due to corona situation. However, the test was taken in the October-November session. However, the students formed a movement to cancel the exam. So far, last year's PEC, JSC, HSC and annual examinations of the national curriculum have been canceled in Bangladesh.

Out of these, HSC candidates have been given results by evaluating the grades obtained in the last two examinations (JSC-SSC). The government is planning to take SSC in May-June and HSC in July-August. A short syllabus of these two exams was released on Friday. Abdullah Liton, Bangladesh head of Pearson-Edexcel, has confirmed the cancellation of the summer session exams. On Saturday, he said that the education boards that conduct education in Britain are the regulatory body called 'OffCall' (OFQUAL). The agency has just announced that it will not take the test in May-June.

Pearson-Edexel is one of the few government boards in the UK. Since the government is not taking any exams in the upcoming summer session (May-June) in the UK, no country in the world is conducting ‘O’ and ‘A’ level examinations under this board. However, if anyone wants, he can take part in the examination scheduled in October-November. So far no one was able to send in the perfect solution, which is not strange.

English medium or foreign curriculum is taught in several schools in Bangladesh. Most of these are students of the British curriculum. There are two institutes conducting British curriculum activities in Bangladesh. These are Adexel and Cambridge University. Edexcel students are relatively more of the two. In addition, some schools teach curricula in Australia, Canada, the United States and a few other countries. It is learned that after the cancellation of the summer session examination last year, the students were given grades considering four ‘factors’.

The system was named CAG (CAG-Center Assisted Grade). These factors include: The results obtained by the student in the mock test taken at the school. The results of the 'class test' were taken from the schools which could not take this test. The schools that could not even take the class test have taken the possible grades of the student from the teacher there. These three are paired with the board’s automatically imposed grades. In other words, the board did not accept the plaques given by the schools from the three sources as final.

Earlier, the tendency of students to get grades from schools was taken into account. In this case, the amount of ‘A’, ‘B’, ‘C’ etc. grades received by the students from a school in different subjects are evaluated through software. That is linked to the assessment results sent from the school. Abdullah Liton said that this year grades will be given in ‘Tag’ (TAG-Teachers Assisted Grade) system. However, a detailed announcement has not been made yet. Researchers of the board are working on this. The instructions and decision will be published on February 22.

Concerned parties say that English medium education has a large number of private examinees who are not students of any school. So grading those students in the tag system can be a big challenge. However, research is underway. On the other hand, there are about 500 English medium schools all over the country including Dhaka. But only 117 of these institutions have been registered in accordance with the law of the government of Bangladesh. The rest are violating the policy of the Ministry of Education.

An unnamed British Council official said the board had to proceed cautiously as most English medium schools were not under government regulation. In addition to accepting the results of the ‘mock’ or ‘class’ tests provided by the school, there was also an announcement last summer session to apply the ‘verification’ method to students on a random basis. In other words, there was a method of taking viva of some students to check whether the grade provided by the school is correct.

Some parents, who did not want to be named, said that if the school was given 100% responsibility for providing grades, the students-parents could be held hostage. Schools can demand more money. They have given advice in policy making keeping this issue in mind. An average of 10,000 students from Bangladesh take part in the summer session every year. The registration process has not started yet.

However, local representatives of Adexel have got the idea that there are about 6,000 candidates. The Cambridge Curriculum, on the other hand, is considered the private board of education in the UK. This curriculum also has an average of 5-6 thousand candidates in the summer session in Bangladesh. Professor Nehal Ahmed, Chairman, Dhaka Board of Education, said that Adexel or Cambridge has activities all over the world. Their problems are relatively high. Moreover, the current Corona situation in the UK is relatively dire. So they canceled the test considering their reality. We will decide SSC and HSC exams according to the reality of our cowardly situation.