Have a look at this.

http://www.dailynews.lk/2005/02/15/fea10.html

Isn’t Devi Balika a rather non-elitist joint? All hope is not lost for free education.

Has anyone considered the socioeconomic aspect? I come from a fairly academic middle class background, and I’ve always had to prove myself in school. When I got my OLevel results, my mom wasn’t happy because I got a C for Maths, although I had As for all other subjects. Compare that with my classmates C, who was so rich he had his own Merc at 15, and S, whose mother was a hooker in Sweden while his dad worked in a service station in Borella. Both of them failed OLevels. Their parents did not give a flyf about their education.

So you cant really compare the number of people who get 8As and say they perform better. in fact, if you compare the pass rate of some of these i believe it’s St.Bridget’s who had the best stats until recently. (about 3 years ago.. donno now)

The school as an ‘education institution’ particularly in an urban setting is failing, you don’t go to school to learn, you got there for other things, sports, brand, extra-co. the package. most of the learning happens in tuition classes, especially for the ‘main subjects’. in A/Ls this is almost exclusively the case, even in some (if not most) of the ‘international schools’.

continual assessment, at least when i was in school, was just a redundant exercise. teachers don’t bother, you get red,and green dots (the marking criteria) on quite literally, ‘face value’.

a. Possibly in the 80s. Dr Ananda Tissa de Alwis?

b. Yes. Private schools tend to perform better than your average govt school, but perhaps not as well as national schools (eg: Royal, Ananda, Visakha etc).

c. I think govt unis have continual assessments. It’s the same for local A-Levels. Btw I did Cambridge A-Levels and I only had to sit one exam (I skipped AS). No assignments or anything.

IELTS is not reliable.

1994 1998
Literacy 62 61
Numeracy 45 51
Life Skills 27 55

(2) The assessments in international schools too would vary but rates should be better overall, one would think.
(3) No, universities now have continuous assessments, but as we know anecdotally, university students still lack basic competencies.There was a pilot to do English competency using IELTS scale. Whether they’ll have funds to do that full scale, I doubt. Will post the info I have on the IELTS pilot.

Few questions, though.

(a) When and who abandoned the system of passing/failing at each grade?
(b) Do they have such a system at international schools / private schools or just like govt. schools they to promote students to next grade irrespective of their performance?
(c) Do local universities too follow such systems and decide only on the results of the final exam? (I know they don’t do so in Medicine and Engineering, but what about the other subjects?)

Isn’t there? How about the end-of-year examinations for Grade 9 students?