SB assures no mess up of results

Students welcome to apply for transparent re-scrutiny

December 27, 2011, 9:22 pm, The Island.

by Dasun Edirisinghe

Higher Education Minister S. B. Dissanayake yesterday assured that there was no mess up or contradictions in the just released GCE (A/L) exam results and if some students were not satisfied with their results the ministry was ready to take them individually to see their respective evaluated answer scripts.

Addressing a media conference at the University Grants Commission auditorium, Minister Dissanayake said that there was a minor technical error in calculating district ranks which was given with students’ results, but it was corrected by the Examination Department the following day after issuing the results.

"The results or ‘Z’ – scores of students did not change," he said adding that however, it would not affect the district ranks when enrolling students to universities.

Answering a question from a journalist, the minister ruled out punishment to anyone responsible for the technical error which caused the mix up of the district ranks.

Any student could ask for re-scrutiny of his/her results and the department would oblige in a very transparent manner. He had already discussed it with the Education Minister Bandula Gunawardena and the Commissioner General of Examinations Anura Edirisinghe and both had expressed their readiness to do it, he said.

Examinations Commissioner (School Examinations and Results) Amith Jayasundera said that the re–scrutiny application forms were sent to school principals with the results and the private candidates could follow the model application which would be published in newspapers on Dec. 29. The Department would accept applications until Jan. 09.

"When someone applies for re-scrutiny of results, their answer papers would be re-evaluated by experts under the supervision of three chief supervisors," Jayasundera said adding "it is very transparent."

He said that some of the students had entered the index numbers of another examination (General Information Technology)that they had sat recently and that was the main reason why some candidates got wrong results when checking the results online, but it was not a fault of the department.

The examination department mentioned clearly in result sheets that the district ranks were issued on a temporary basis as most of students did not sit the examination in their home districts, Jayasundera said.

Denying allegations that delay in issuing results was due to the UGC, its Chairman Prof. Gamini Samaranayake said that they couldn’t come up with a formula to merge the ‘Z’ – scores of old and new syllabuses until they had access to the results.

"We held the first meeting on Nov. 15 to discuss the matters relating to enrolling students to universities for the next academic year as students sat the examination under two different syllabuses," he said adding that first meeting decided to appoint an experts committee to formulate it.

According to him, the second meeting was held on Dec. 11. However, the experts committee received the final results on Dec. 23 and they issued the formula on the following day, Prof. Samaranayake said.