Rearranging district rankings:

No student will be victimized - SB

Dharma Sri Abeyratne and Ridma Dissanayake

No student will be victimized through the process of rearranging district rankings of Advanced Level examination 2011 results, Higher Education Minister S.B. Dissanayake said.

"If a student is not satisfied with the result, the student can apply for an answer script re-evaluation. Applications for answer script re-evaluation will be accepted from December 29 to January 9 by the Examination Department. The re-evaluation process will commence after the closing date on January 9," he said.

The minister said that if a student is not satisfied with the result, steps will be taken to bring the student to peruse his or her answer script so that he or she can clear any doubt.

"There is nothing wrong with the answer scripts evaluation process, Z score and island rankings since those processes have been completed satisfactorily. However, certain shortcomings have been reported with the district rankings. Those have been rectified and the final result issued," Minister Dissanayake said.

"If a student is not satisfied with the results, the best way to clear any misconception is to apply for re-evaluation of answer scripts," the minister said.

"The error was only on district ranking as there was a mix up in the ranking of Matara and Colombo districts. The mix up had occurred when district ranking was calculated. It was purely a technical error caused when using computers. This error has already been rectified," Dissanayake said. The minster added that students will never be affected by this error, since district ranking is not considered for university admission. Students who sat for the GCE (A-L) examination this year, have the opportunity to see their answer scripts if they have any suspicion about their results, said Higher Education Minister S.B. Dissanayake. The decision to allow students to view answer scripts was taken after discussions with Education Minister Bandula Gunawardena and Examinations Commissioner General Anura Edirisinghe, he added. "Any student who has a doubt with their results can view their answer scripts at the Examinations Department after making an appeal," the minister said.

The Education Ministry suspended the GCE (A-L) Island and District Level rankings on Monday due to some doubts in results. Results have now been re-released, he added. "If a candidate is not satisfied with the results, he or she could apply for re-scrutiny," Dissanayake said. Applications for re-correction of examination papers will be accepted from today. Re-correction applications for private candidates will be published in the Daily News today. See page x. It will also be published in the Dinamina and Thinakaran.

Examinations Department Commissioner of the School Examination Unit Amith Jayasundara rejected allegations that results of some students had been changed. "Most students had entered their GIT Examination numbers and they have received results in various subjects schemes. Most GIT Examination numbers are similar to (A-L) examination numbers and it had caused a conflict in the results," Jayasundara said.

Several district ranks in the Southern province and Western province have been changed due to complex and busy process in issuing (A/L) results and there was no issue with regard to Z-scores, he added.