CABINET has approved the removal of scaling of marks for the Fiji Year 12 and Year 13 certificate examinations effective from this year.
Minister for Education Dr Mahendra Reddy, in his submission to Cabinet, said despite the rationales for scaling, it concealed students’ raw marks and did not reflect their true achievement.
He said with the removal of scaling from external examinations, the syllabi from Years 1 to 13 would be revised and standardised with specific learning outcomes.
He said the internal assessment components would be strengthened in all subjects and moderated internally in schools with strong emphasis on teaching and revision.
In a Government statement issued yesterday afternoon, Dr Reddy said the Year 10 national examination would be reintroduced and externally-prepared final examinations for each subject for Years 6-9 and Year 11 be introduced.
He said the ministry would provide detailed solutions and marking guide for each of the subject examinations.
He also outlined measures to uplift student performance.
He said these included the removal of administrative duties from teachers so they could spend their time on lesson preparation, teaching and revision, specialised and short-term training for teachers, ensuring that schools had adequate resources to enhance teaching and learning. Scaling is a fundamental process used to convert scores to a common scale, which adjusts the results students achieve in their various subjects for the purpose of aggregation, ranking and selection for entry to universities or other tertiary institutions and scholarships award.
The scaling system was introduced in 1979 for the Fiji Seventh Form Examination and in 1989 for Fiji School Leaving Certificate as a principled method of addressing subject equivalence.
