The Education Ministry said yesterday it would not review the controversial GCE A/L results despite requests and protests from various quarters.

Education Minister Bandula Gunawardena said President Mahinda Rajapaksa was expected to appoint a fivemember committee comprising a Supreme Court Judge, three Vice Chancellors and the Attorney General to look into the blunder by the Examinations Department when preparing the district rankings. The minister said the Z-score and the Island rankings were correct but admitted there was a mix-up in the district rankings.

He said none of the students had been affected due to this mistake as it had now been rectified.

The minister said there was no necessity to review or reissue the results as the web showed the correct results with the Z score and island and district rankings. The committee will recommend remedial measures to prevent a repetition of a similar mess-up, identify those responsible and al to recommend amendments to the Education Act. The minister said under no circumstances would he submit his resignation as what happened was a matter of collective responsibility and moreover such a tradition of resignation was non-existent in Sri Lanka's political environment.

At a media conference held at the Examinations Department auditorium the minister was adamant in saying that the GCE A/L results released by the Examinations Department after revising the district rankings were correct.

"We are awaiting the observations and recommendations of this committee before taking any action against those responsible for the mess-up," he said. The minister said President Rajapaksa had spoken to him, Higher Education Minister S.B. Dissanayaka and education officials about the delay in releasing the 2011 GCE A/L results and urged them to speed up the process which eventually led to the technical blunder.

He said there was a conspiracy from several quarters mainly from a section of teachers to disrupt the 2011 GCE A/L examination and described it as an attempt to ruin the future of some 300,000 children. "it was a premeditated and a malicious act going on from June to disrupt the exam. At first, university lecturers said they would not mark A/L answer papers if their salary issue was not resolved. Several teachers unions said they would take trade union action and would not participate in holding the exam if university teachers refused to mark answer papers. They wanted the payment for paper making increased though hundreds of teachers said they were prepared to mark answer scripts free-of-charge," the minister said.

He said the Z score had been studied in-depth by a team of eminent professionals including university professors and ratified by the Supreme Court as the most appropriate method to select students to universities.

He said education and higher education ministries had consulted the Attorney General prior to the release of results and any student was free to apply for re-correction if he or she had the slightest of doubt about the validity of the results.

The revision of results is a normal occurrence. Last year some 80,000 students applied for re-correction.

Source: Daily Mirror - Sri Lanka