CLASSIFIED | POLITICS | TERRORISM | OPINION | VIEWS

Tens of thousands of students and the parents affected by the erroneously marked advanced level examination papers have expressed their extreme displeasure on the conduct of the Department of Examinations.

Dr. V. W. Jagath Vasanthathilaka, Consultant Rheumatologist. Teaching Hospital Kandy. 20.01.2006

Sri Lankan public have lost the confidence placed upon the department of examinations entirely, due to their failure to provide accurate examination results following the advanced level examination held in the year 2005. The students and the parents say that, there will be applications for re correction by almost all the students, and for all the advanced level subjects from next year onwards as they no longer trust the results released by the department.

Some of the students affected in the area in and around Kandy are the brilliant children of the medical specialists attached to the Teaching Hospital Kandy; these consultants are part and partial of the extended academic staff of the medical school at the University of Peradeniya. The siblings of students who are now affected have produced extra ordinary examination results in the previous years representing leading schools in Kandy, and they have secured top ten positions on the basis of the all Island ranking according to the merit.

The errors in marking the examination papers have resulted in discarding the cream of the cream of all the esteemed younger generation in to the dust bin. Their entire future seems to be in the midst of garbage, where as the garbage seems to have given an opportunity to enter the medical schools and the engineering faculties. The future professionals will be a representation of the students selected on these erroneous results, and the public will be at grave risk form those professionals, if they are going to under take responsible positions in the medical as well as in other professions. Future patients and the public will have to bear the consequences.

The mysterious error in a machine at the department of examinations seems to be the underlying mechanism for all this frustration. Frustrated younger generation with lost opportunities despite their extraordinary skills and their utmost commitment for academic achievements, caused by a mysterious error would not serve us a brighter future by any measure of good standards. It is extremely important to investigate such errors and to rectify them in order to prevent a reoccurrence of such grave errors in the future.

As usual the Sri Lankan substandard news papers have produced misleading and biased reports on this issue purposefully trying hard to cover up the actual situation. There were reports that the poor ink quality or frequent electrical failures would have coursed these wide spread yet selective errors. However, the Electricity board does not agree with these reports. The view of the medical students at the university of Peradeniya and the parents of the affected students, is that they are not sure whether the machine had been manipulated in order to produce poor results in Kandy, Galle, Badulla, Mathale, Kegalle, Matara and Kurunegala where the advanced level results usually produce a large number of students selecting on the all island merit basis with very high aggregate marks, as well as very high Z scores accordingly.

Some of the leading schools severely affected mostly in Kandy are the Mahamaya (Girls) College, Dharmarja College Kandy, Girls High School, Trinity College Kandy, Kingswood College and the Pushpadana girls school. The students of all the other schools in Kandy are also affected to a large extent. These schools, not only have produced academics of high standards traditionally in the past, the same schools have produced many exceptional sportsmen representing the Island in the fields of cricket and rugby. In fact, majority of the Sri Lankan rugby team is the products of Kandy schools representing Kandy sports club. It is obvious that any attempts to discard this esteemed fraction of the younger generation are a useless exercise. The parents and the relatives of these affected children are well respected professionals in the field of Medicine, Legal profession, engineering, the university academics, and in other professions. Children of school principals, school teachers, high ranking Military officials, as well as the children of tax paying business community in Kandy, were also affected. Similar situation seems to be prevailing in the other major cities such as Galle, Matara and Kurunegala.

Thousands of Students Island wide representing on the basis of accurate Advanced Level results have been denied of an opportunity to study a desired field in their future university education.

Large section representing the Island that is, thousands of students in the outstations seem to have denied their respected and due results based on their correct performance of the examination. Just a simple pass in the advanced level is also a valuable asset for the younger generation. They seem have denied some students obtaining even a simple pass due to the above mentioned gross machine error which seem to have gone un noticed for mysterious reasons. Furthermore, most of the Private academic institutions do not have similar institutions in the outstations.

The parents are still anxious that there will be further attempts to undermine the chances of selecting them to the respective faculty on the basis of accurate and re corrected results. It is not justifiable to penalize the students and request them to sit again for the examination for a mistake which the students are not responsible by any means. The parents say that, there seem to be groups and individuals who are having vested interests trying to manipulate the whole situation for their advantage. The affected students and the parents now seem to be preparing to take legal action in order to prevent such discrepancies taking place in the future.

BACK TO LATEST NEWS

DISCLAIMER