The May/June CAIE 2020 Fiasco

If you’ve been following the news as well as twitter, you must know that there has been major backlash towards the Cambridge CAIE board after the release of results on 11th August 2020.

What happened?

Due to the ongoing pandemic, these CIEs were cancelled and the British council announced that grades will be awarded on the basis of expected grades as well as a rank order determined by the teacher. These grades were supposed to be rewarded on the basis of the past evidence and progress of the year and in case of final a level grades, their A2 result.

When the results came out, several students were downgraded unfairly. While some students having the same result got upgraded to A*s, others got downgraded to Us and Ds. Some students who had never gotten below a B in their entire lives, were downgraded from As to Ds and even Us which would be impossible if they had actually given the exam (if you know how the A levels system works). Cambridge was supposed to be lenient towards their students but instead their grades were unjust and unfair.

Outcome

These grades are crucial for those kids that are applying to university the following semester. Due to unfair grades, many have lost their university acceptances abroad and in Pakistan as well as scholarships they worked for.

On top of that, merit is extremely high with FSc students getting grace marks and IBCC cutting the marks if a levels student while making the equivalence, which makes it nearly impossible for kids to get admissions locally as well.

Student Response

Similar to the students of UK and Scotland, Pakistani students made their way onto social media where they discovered that many other people had been wronged, just like them. Waqar Zakka made a video to help these students by uniting them together. They began to use hash tags on twitter like #imrankhanjusticeCAIE to get the attention of the government and starting arranging protests in order to get justice.

So far protests have been held in Islamabad where a guy named Arham Zeehsan along with his friends was able to talk to the ministers and is working with them as a bridge between the students and the higher authorities, and Lahore at emporium mall. Protests are to be held at the Karachi press club as well as faisal chowk Lahore along with protests in Multan and Hyderabad. Maybe kids have also made videos on instagram to tell their story and help unite other kids as well.

Result

As a result of the backlash, the education minister Murad Rass has talked to the head of Cambridge in Pakistan who then asked in turn asked for a few days. A second tweet followed saying Cambridge will inform us of their decision on Tuesday 18Th August 2020.

=>Panda One