Revaluation of criteria:

President to appoint committee on Z-score

Ridma DISSANAYAKE

The government is to appoint a high level committee with a view to restructuring the Z-score system for the admission of students to universities.

According to Higher Education Minister S.B. Dissanayake , this committee will be entrusted with restructuring the present Z-score system to ensure that no student is subjected to any injustices in university admission.

Minister Dissanayake said President Mahinda Rajapaksa will appoint an independent committee comprising representatives from the Higher Education Ministry and University Grants Commission (UGC) to re-consider the Z score system.

Addressing a press conference in Colombo, Minister Dissanayake said that the present system has become complicated and more students face inconvenience owing to this system.

He said the new committee will comprise university lecturers and experts in statistics. This committee will evolve a new mechanism to minimize the number of students who face inconvenience due to the selection process.

“We do not like to put students in trouble and we are looking forward to introducing a fairer system for enrolling students to the universities who have sat for the G.C.E.(A/L) examination under both old and new syllabuses.”, the minister said.

In addition to that the Higher Education Ministry along with the UGC has decided to stop all practical tests which have been conducted by the universities to select students for certain courses, such as, aesthetic,architecture and designing courses.

According to Higher Education Deputy Minister Nandimithra Ekanayake they have decided to stop all above tests due to their non-transparency.

‘Sometimes several students with personal talents have failed these practical aptitude tests due to favouritism by the lecturers. The ministry has received a large number of petitions about this issue. As a result of this, the Higher Education Ministry has taken measures to stop all practical tests which students have to face at the university entrance.

“Seventy one students who passed G.C.E.(A/L)s with three A s under the Arts stream have failed to enter the universities because they have failed the practical tests conducted by the universities.

We have done several things to protect transparency of the enrolling system to the university, he said.