Proficiency certificate for year 5 schol

Irangika Range and Sandasen Marasinghe

Education Minister Susil Premajayanth told parliament yesterday that a decision had been taken to issue a certificate of proficiency to students who obtain above 80 marks at the grade 5 scholarship examination.

The Minister said the decision was communicated to the Commissioner of Examinations.

He made the remarks replying to a question raised by JVP MP Anura Kumara Dissanayake.

The Minister said the current system of identifying the students as ‘passed’ and ‘failed’ with the criteria of cut-off marks to select students to grant scholarship for popular schools for grade six was not fair. The Minister said the cut-off marks is decided according to the number of scholarships so that the cut-off marks fluctuates year by year.

Cut off marks is not a criteria to label whether a student had passed or failed, he said. The Minister said students who obtain more than 80 marks at the examination should be considered as ‘passed’.