Teacher unions dismiss expert committee report

January 15, 2012, 9:43 pm, The Island.

by Dasun Edirisinghe

Teacher trade unions yesterday dismissed the recommendations made by experts committee appointed by President Mahinda Rajapaksa to look into the matters related to the mess up of the district rankings of the GCE (A/L) results.

General Secretary of the Ceylon Teachers Service Union (CTSU) Mahinda Jayasinghe told The Island that there was nothing different between the statements of the Education Minister and the experts committee on the messing up of rankings.

He said that the report was totally fabricated by the government.

There were five steps in the results evaluating process: marking the answer scripts, grading the results (A, B, C and S), computerizing the data, making country rankings and finally district ranking, Jayasinghe said.

"The committee recommendation conveniently said like the Minister that the error was in the final step and it was corrected by the Examinations Department the following day," he said.

The trade unionist claimed that none of the experts from the statistics field were included in the committee. It should have investigated the formula which combined the Z scores of two syllabuses.

Jayasinghe said they were demanding the re-evaluation of answer scripts along with investigation of the Z score formula which combined the results of two different syllabuses without putting innocent students in trouble.

General Secretary of the Ceylon Teachers Union Joseph Stalin said that the committee failed to investigate the messing up of the results.

Stalin noted that the committee report said there was nothing wrong, but they recommend that it should not be repeated next time and called for action to prevent such incidents.

"So, the committee admitted there was something wrong with the results," he said.