Education and examinations

Parents send their children to school for education. In this country, education is highly valued and often considered by many as the only way to progress. Therefore, those who design and deliver education in school and beyond bear a great national responsibility.

Quality of education in our national and other institutions has been a recurrent topic of public concern in recent times. Since more recently, the processes of education, especially the conduct of examinations and release of results, have become focal points of discussion, critique and now a reason for despair.

This is very serious and it may shatter the foundations of our national institutions and social organisations. Therefore, once again, look at the very purpose of examinations in our education system.

Purpose of an examination

The essential purpose of an examination held at the end of a course of study based on a curriculum is to assess the student’s learning. While the curriculum specifies the desired learning objectives and levels of achievement, examinations are designed as instruments of measurement.

The first and the foremost purpose of the examination is to measure the student’s learning achievement and communicate it back to the student. Is this very purpose served by the processes adopted at the GCE (AL) examinations today? The obvious answer is, no!

After the examination, students must receive a feedback comprising:

(a) results based on the measurement – examination marks in this case

(b) comments on the student’s performance including achievements and failures and further

(c) how the student could overcome his/her failures.

Process of feedback

Examinations are part of education and they, in this process of feedback, help students to improve their learning. No examination whatsoever, whether school, zonal, provincial or national, can be exempted from this role of giving feedback to student. To deny this learning is to commit a crime.

Unfortunately, our students taking GCE (AL) examination do not have access to examiner comments on their answers. They cannot see their own examination answer script. They even do not know how many marks have been given by examiners. What they get is only a letter grade which is assigned to a wide range of marks.

For example, the range of marks for the grade A is 75 to 100. A student receiving an A grade is unaware if the mark is close to 100 or 75, which is vital information for the learning and motivation of the student. Why examination raw marks are not published by the Department of Examination is a mystery.

Examination marks are part of education and therefore, whether or not the Department of Examinations is part of education in this country, GCE (AL) examination raw marks must be published for the benefit of the student who has the right for information. This is the first thing that the Department must do in order to restore the credibility of the examination itself.

Introduction of Z Score

Going beyond the international standards of national examinations, our country has introduced a mechanical device to convert examination raw marks into a statistic called ‘Z Score’. The reasons for this conversion came out of observations made by many that students who took certain subjects for the examination enjoyed an easy way of reaching the higher ranking in certain streams and hence the raw marks were not good enough to decide who enters the university.

With this, rightly or otherwise, our educationists further lost of their sight of the purpose of education and examinations. Z Score was useful for those who make decisions about university admissions. Nearly 90 per cent of the students who take GCE (AL) do not enter universities and hence the Z Score is irrelevant to them.

The majority of students (including the minority entering the university) need to know the raw marks, the grades and the examiner comments on their work. This fundamental purpose of education and the student’s right is conveniently ignored.

What is this Z score?

A universal application of the Z Score across all the disciplines and subjects is a matter subject to controversy. I will not discuss it at this time. What is this Z Score? What is the formula used? Are the students, parents, teachers and principals of schools are informed and educated about the formula and why it is applied? The answer is, no.

Not even some of our leaders in education and educational institutions are fully aware of the answer to this question. How can a nation accept the verdict of persons who make the decision in darkness?

In statistics, Z Score is calculated to find out how well or how poorly has a given performer ( a student in this case) performed in comparison to the average performance of a group of performers at a given task (examination in this case).

If your result is above the average, then you have done well, and if below the average, the result is poor. In order to measure the degree of ‘how well’ or ‘how poor’ the method takes the difference between the average (mean) mark of the group and the mark received by the individual student and that difference is divided by the standard deviation of the group marks (denoted by simple ‘s’ in statistics). The result, stated in terms of ‘s’ is the Z Score. The standard deviation tells us the ‘average’ difference between individual scores and the group mean.

To clarify this further, let us take a simple example. Assume that the average (mean) score of the marks obtained by all students in a given subject is 55 marks, while student A has obtained 70 marks. The difference is 15 marks which is divided by the standard deviation (assume that s is 6.0) to obtain the Z score of 2.5. Thus, the Z score is a measure of the distance between the average performer and the given performer.

If the given performer has less than 55 marks, the Z Score will be negative and seen as a poor performer to that extent. This is the straight forward method which I believe would have been adopted by the educationists to meet certain situationally-specific factors like the number of sittings by a student, etc.

The criticism today is that the full formula and its application methods are not fully disclosed. People seem to also argue that the Z Score is unclear in respect of those who took old syllabi vs. the new syllabi at the last examination. Surely, this point is valid, and begs explanation in a manner that the general public would understand.

Educational bureaucracy

At the heart of a most valid reasoning of this controversy is a conservative attitude that is shared and protected by many educationists and administrators. The attitude is that ‘examinations are confidential.’

Those who hold this attitude apply tyrannical methods to examinations: they create tense environments at examinations; they protect examination scripts are their own property without disclosing their contents or examiner comments to students; and they claim they have proprietary rights over those of students.

We may have inherited these from our colonial practices which the colonial masters have now changed drastically. We continue because they offer powerful shields behind which our educationists can hide their mistakes. This attitude goes well with our cultural values of authority without responsibility.

Discarding this attitude means hard work, fair-play and loss of power in front of students and their parents! This is an aspect of educational bureaucracy that I had tried to change over and over without success.

As a member of the Governing Council of the National Institute of Education in the 1990s, and as a Vice-Chairman of the University Grants Commission 2006/2007, I personally tried out some of my ideas against this attitude only to find that I did not occupy the correct seat of authority.

However, I introduced all what I talk of academic transparency to the Postgraduate Institute of Management, which I directed from the right seat of authority from 1986 to 2007 and the new attitudes that I cultivated have paid off. I must say that many other higher learning institutions have also followed suit successfully.

Important matter of policy and practice

The media coverage that has been given to the issues revolving around Z Scores and their district rankings and the emerging anxiety among parents and students and others concerned pose an important matter of policy and practice to Government.

Given the circumstances, one has to consider the implications of a widespread disbelief in the examinations results, including the following:

(a) internationally, universities and educational authorities may begin to ask questions about the validity of examination results of Sri Lankan students, and they may gradually turn to other measures of performance

(b) the amount of anxiety and mental suffering that thousands of students go through the feeling that their examination results are incorrect is beyond measurement; and

(c) a belief among the public that government is responsible for this and hence a loss of faith in our ability to govern undermines the long-term stability of the Government.

In view of the above, the Government (not the educational bureaucracy) can gain by doing the following:

(i) Release raw marks of all students including their rankings;

(ii) re-examine Z Scores and clarify discrepancies, if any;

(iii) explain and justify the methods of treatment imposed on the marks of old syllabu s students;

(iv) permit students to examine their marked scripts by visiting the centres where they took the exams.

(The writer is Senior Professor of Management Studies, University of Sri Jayewardenepura.)