No injustice to students over OCR error

Dharme Sri ABEYRATNE

COLOMBO: The Association of Parents of students affected by the Optical Character Reading (OCR) machine error say that their children are unable to enter the Medical Faculty due to inaction by the University Grants Commission, due the Department of Examinations marking the 2005 Advanced Level Chemistry Multiple Choice Question (MCQ) paper by using the OCR machine.

According to the association, there was an error in marking the Chemistry MCQ paper in 2005. To rectify the error Z-scores were released twice and a considerable number of additional students were allocated to Medical Faculties.

Instead of the usual 850 medical students nearly 1000 students were registered for medicine based on the 2005 A/L result.

In other words more students were admitted to the universities including OCR machine error affected students.

These students say that they were compelled to register for university admissions based on the 2005 results. If it wasn't OCR machine error they hadn't been selected to university admissions in 2005.

However, they have done well enough to enter the Medical Faculty based on the 2006 A/L results.

According to the association the students are being deprived of that opportunity for no fault of them.

In this regard, the Daily News contacted UGC Senior Assistant Secretary Priyantha Premakumara over the phone, he clearly stated that there isn't any discrimination or injustice whatsoever to the students which caused by OCR machine error.

"The President Mahinda Rajapaksa advised UGC to intake even if the students who have gone down by the revised Z-score. Many students were lucky to enter the universities."