'O/L pass rate to be improved'

Disna Mudalige

The Education Ministry aims to improve the pass rate of the O/L examination upto 80 percent by 2016 by raising the quality of the local education, Education Minister Bandula Gunawardena said.

Addressing a press conference at the Ministry yesterday, he said the pass rate of the O/L is about 60 percent at present. He said as a step heading towards this achievement, the Ministry in collaboration with the Examination Department and Educational Publications Department would commence issuing evaluation reports to the market on a yearly basis for subjects on which students have scored comparatively low marks.

The subjects on which the Evaluation Reports have been prepared will be based on the results of the 2010 O/L exam include Mathematics, Science, English, History, Sinhala and Tamil. He said these books will be distributed free among government school teachers. The other interested parties such as parents, and students and teachers in private schools can purchase these publications at a nominal price in the market.

He said the evaluation report has been compiled from the information collected from the teachers who do O/L paper marking. In addition to the questions and model answers, it also has analytical statistics on the number of students who sat for the exam, the distribution of their grades according to the district and educational zone. It also includes observations, suggestions and advice for students and teachers on each question.