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Ministry says March but unions want January for O/L
Controversy reigns over the GCE Ordinary Level (O/L) exam, with unions insisting the exam should be held as scheduled next month but the government deciding to postpone the exam until March.
Many schools say syllabuses have not been completed due to schools being closed for long periods because of the pandemic.
Education unions this week said the Ministry of Education should hold exams in January 2021 as scheduled, testing students only on the part of the syllabus that schools have been able to cover in the time they have been able to stay open.
The Ceylon Teachers Union (CTU) said this would reduce congestion in classrooms and also alleviate the psychological impact of continuous postponement of exams.
Last week, the government rescheduled the date of this year’s O/L exams to March 2021 on grounds that students in rural areas have not been able to cover the syllabus.
From the results of a questionnaire on its website, the education department said it found that rural schools had covered barely half the syllabus due to schools being closed for most of this year.
Holding exams in March 2021 would give rural schools more time to cover the syllabus, the department said.
But the unions said buying time would only drag out the process and there was no guarantee that schools could be kept open with COVID-19 ravaging the country.
They also argue that having Grade 11 students continuing in the same class would have a spill-over effect and create a gap six months in the education system as Grade 12 classes begin only in July 2021.
This would give Advanced Level 2021 classes only 18 months to cover a syllabus designed for 24 months.
The process would result in a chain reaction in coming years unless a solution is found to cover the syllabus by 2022, the unions said.
To circumvent the problem, they suggest that exam papers be based on the portion of the syllabus that has been covered and exams held from January 18-28, 2021, as scheduled.
CTU General Secretary Joseph Stalin said 625,000 students are preparing to sit the exams, 325,000 for the first time and the rest sitting for the second and third time and already familiar with the syllabus.
The Sri Lanka Principals Service Union said delays had caused anxiety among children and parents. Its President, Mohan Weerasinghe, said parents had complained that their children had prepared themselves to sit the exams in January and postponing the test for another three months would cause them unnecessary stress.
The postponement would only “make the tuition mafia richer”, the union said, quoting a parent crying out, “We have to spend on tuition fees for another three months in these difficult times”.
“This will only make tuition masters richer,” Mr. Weerasinghe said.
Last week, the education ministry said that despite the increasing number of positive coronavirus cases there were no plans to close schools.
Then, on Tuesday, Cyclone Burevi’s attack on the north and east of the country pushed authorities to close all schools in the affected regions.
As well, schools in the Hatton and Dambulla educational zones closed because of new COVID-19 cases in those areas.
All schools were closed for much of the year. Schools that closed on March 13 reopened and were closed again when the second wave of the pandemic intensified.
The second outbreak has been stronger than the first, with several parts of the country being affected and the Western Province taking the brunt of the illness load.
The decision to postpone exams until March was also taken in view of schools in the Western Province and other affected areas being closed.
Only around 5,100 of 10,165 schools across the country are functioning, and that, too, with restricted pupil attendance.
Students are being asked to attend on a rotation basis, with each class holding only 25 students a day. This has enabled only two schooling days a week for children, with not much study being completed in classrooms, the ministry said.
Because of this, it would not be fair to students to hold the exams in January, the ministry said.
Online classes conducted through the ministry portal, although partially successful in delivering course content to students in urban areas, had not helped students in remote areas because of poor telecommunication signals.
Testing students on assessment of partial syllabus is occurring in other countries in this pandemic-stricken year, Mr. Stalin said.
“The decision to reopen schools was not planned. They took decisions without any discussion with relevant stakeholders. The teachers or principals who serve at grassroots level should have been consulted,” Mr. Stalin added.