British Council announces free retakes for A-Level exams

ISLAMABAD: The British Council has declared that A-level students will be given the opportunity to retake exams that were initially cancelled in May due to protests led by PTI.

This move comes as a relief for many, with the Cambridge International Country Director for Pakistan, Uzma Yousuf, confirming the decision.

Yousuf told Dawn that the students whose examinations were nullified on May 10, 11, and 12 will be permitted to retake the exams without any cost in November.

This course of action was taken in consideration of the grievances expressed by students concerning their disappointing results.

The motivation behind these unfortunate outcomes lies in the anticipated grades allocated by the Cambridge International Examinations (CIE) for the three days during which the examinations were cancelled.

The protests, ignited by the arrest of former the PTI chairman, led to these cancellations.

According to a social media post by the secretary of the Federal Education and Professional Training Ministry, a retake exam will be held by Cambridge in the October/November series. This will allow students to cover subjects or components they missed due to the law and order situation in May.

· British Council will provide a reduced cost plan of logistics.
· Re-evaluation and Re-assessment of individual cases will be carried out, where enormous difference is found to have been noticed between school assessed grades and Cambridge assessment grades. (4/7)

— Secretary, Mo FE&PT (@SecMoFEPT) August 18, 2023

The secretary conveyed that Cambridge will waive the fee for these exams, and the British Council will offer a “reduced-cost plan of logistics”. He also indicated that cases with substantial disparities between school-assessed grades and Cambridge assessment grades would undergo re-evaluation and reassessment.

MDCAT exams rescheduled to Sept

While schools will be responsible for submitting requests for re-evaluation and reassessment to Cambridge, they will bear 80% of the associated costs. Parents will contribute the remaining 20%, which will be reimbursed if re-evaluation leads to grade changes.

Additionally, the education ministry aims to facilitate communication with vice-chancellors of prestigious universities to enable flexibility in admission processes and coordinate similar measures with provincial governments.

The establishment of a complaint redressal mechanism under the Private Institution Education Regulatory Authority (PIERA) is also in the works to address unresolved issues comprehensively, the secretary added.