Achieving a 75% pass rate at the GCE O/L examination by 2016 is within reach when one takes into account the pass rate at the 2013 GCE O/L examination – an increase from 64.74% in 2012 to 66.67% in 2013, the Education Ministry announced yesterday.

Education Minister Bandula Gunawardena told a media briefing held at the Ministry that the education performance goals set for the 2016 GCE O/L examination are quite feasible. He said it was heartening to note that students had performed well in all subjects including English and Mathematics.

“Pass rates of students in Mathematics and English have improved with 57.23% of the students passing in mathematics as opposed to 55.35% in 2012. There is even a 0.12 % increase in English Language pass rates when compared with the previous O/L examination,” he said and added that a drawback was reported in Science, with a slight drop in the pass rate from 68.26% in 2012 to 67.53% in 2013.

“A total of 5,737 candidates have obtained ‘A’ passes in all nine subjects they faced at the O/L examination last year, as opposed to the 4,509 in 2012. Even the number of candidates who failed all nine subjects has dropped from 4.31% in 2012 to 3.57 % this year. Our aim is to bring it down to 1 to 2% by 2016,” he added.

However, the minister attributed the improvement recorded in the overall results at the 2013 GCE O/L examination, to the upgrading and development programmes carried out by the Education Ministry in selected schools countrywide.

“According to plans for this year, a total of 1,000 IT laboratories with 65,000 PC units, 1,000 language centres and 1,000 science laboratories are due to be constructed by the end of this year in schools countrywide,” he said.

The minister said those who set the question papers for each subject have been advised to maintain the paper content within five main indicators -- the syllabus, teacher’s guide book, text books, past papers and evaluation reports.

“Failure to adhere to these indicators has resulted in grave injustice to students from outstation schools,” he added.

The minister said that a further analysis of the 2013 O/L results that were released on Thursday afternoon will be carried out to identify schools that have recorded low performance levels.

“Thereafter we are planning to instruct the relevant zonal education officers to carry out detailed quantitative and qualitative evaluations on reasons that led to the failure,” he added.

Nearly 474,483 candidates sat for the 2013 GCE O/L examination that was held at 4,300 examination centres. A staff of about 75,000 was deployed on examination and evaluation duty.

Source: Daily Mirror - Sri Lanka