Z – Score Fiasco – Minister at Parliment
Wednesday, 22 August 2012

Back ground

• Using the aggregate of raw marks of A’Level subjects for University Admission is an unreliable and obsolete method, not used by other countries or systems of education. This is because of the variance and discrepancies that exist between the variety of subject combinations offered at the A’level , and therefore the element of subjectivity between different examiners during marking. Apart from a few instances where objectivity can be maintained  to a degree (e.g. in MCQ and in certain components of the Maths papers), in most other situations the variance is significant. More recent research has corroborated this position.
• In the case of A’Level students offering Arts subjects (about 75% of students), traditionally ‘easy’ subjects (e.g. Buddhist Civilization, Sinhala, Political Science) are chosen. But with such subject combinations usually employment is not easily obtained. However, with the more difficult subject combinations (e.g. Maths, Food Technology, Languages, IT), through standardization the Z-Score value becomes higher. Consequently more Arts students with the ‘better’ subject combinations gained university admission during the past several years. In fact the use of raw marks in such instances proved to be  a grave injustice to students.

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