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IBCC asks UK education boards to abandon GPA system

* Pakistani boards ask British boards to announce results according to local system to allow students to enrol in universities

By Afnan Khan

LAHORE: The Inter Board Committee of Chairmen (IBCC) has decided not to accommodate any of the major demands of the Cambridge International Examinations (CIE) or any other UK-based education board until they abandon their grade point average (GPA) system and adopt the practice of the Pakistani boards, IBCC chairman Dr Zakria Butt (also the chairman of the Board of Intermediate and Secondary Education Lahore), told Daily Times on Friday.

He said the IBCC had met representatives of the CIE and Edexcel International a few weeks ago. He said the foreign boards had requested the IBCC to consider their O and A levels certification equivalent to the Pakistani matric (secondary school certificate) and intermediate (higher secondary school certificate). He added that the foreign boards also wanted their students to be allowed admission in public colleges and universities on open merit.

The IBCC told the representatives that their demands could not be accommodated until the two boards started announcing the examination results subject-wise and the GPA-based results were replaced by the result displaying the total numbers scored by the students in every subject.

Dr Butt said that under the GPA-based result system, the students seemed to be getting higher grades than those examined by the Pakistani boards. He said that it was possible for a student to get more than 80 percent under the GPA system, while the local system would grade him at about 60 percent.

CIE representative Dr Iftikhar Elahi said an agreement had not been reached between the CIE and IBCC. Dr Elahi, the director of British Council Lahore, said the British Council represented the CIE and conducted its examinations in Pakistan. He said the issue was complicated since it was linked to the CIE’s basic exam policy as the council had informed the officials concerned. He said the CIE regional director William Bickerdike and senior officials would be sent to Pakistan for further talks with the IBCC. He said the CIE representatives would meet IBCC officials from February 20 to 23 to come up with a solution.

Dr Elahi said the CIE had discussed several matters with the IBCC in the past such as the problem of the students of social biology and additional mathematics who were barred by the Pakistani authorities from pre-medical and pre-engineering classes. He said every issue could be resolved through discussion and hoped that this issue would also be solved in the greater interest of tens of thousands of O and A levels students in Pakistan.

Beaconhouse National University’s English Literature Department head Dr Ira Hassan said she would study the issue thoroughly, but believed that the people should keep up with the changing ways of doing things. She said it seemed strange to ask others to switch to an older system instead of us switching to the modern one. She said Britain’s grading system was recognised across the world.

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