Cambridge students protest against ‘unfair grading’

LAHORE:Dozens of O and A level students staging a demonstration blocked The Mall on Monday and strongly protested against, what they termed, unfair grading by the Cambridge Assessment International Education (CAIE) in its recent results.

Carrying banners and placards, the demonstrators, including male and female students gathered at Faisal Chowk and chanted slogans against the CAIE for awarding unfair grading. They demanded the CAIE authorities do justice with Pakistani students. It is pertinent to mention that like other parts of the world, a controversy had emerged over unfair grading in the Cambridge results this year as the foreign examination body did not conduct exams and awarded grades to all the students on the basis of previous assessment and school records. However, it turned out that in most cases the new results did not match the students’ previous performance in mock exams and schools assessment which resulted in downgrading of students.

Federal Education Minister Shafqat Mahmood had also taken notice of the issue as the social media was abuzz against the discriminatory grading system. It is also pertinent to mention that CAIE Pakistan has already announced that it will inform the students about the actions it would take about the results on Tuesday (today). After recording their protest the students dispersed peacefully.

E-course: A five-day e-course on procurement and supply chain management started here at the University Of Health Sciences (UHS), on Monday. The course has a technical collaboration of i+solutions, The Netherlands, and the USAID Global Health Supply Chain Programme.

This course is specifically designed to focus on all major areas of logistics and supply chain in the context of Pakistan’s public health sector with special emphasis on reproductive health commodity and security. A total of 25 participants from various public and private sector organisations from Punjab, Balochistan, Sindh, Gilgit-Baltistan, Federal, Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa and Azad Jammu & Kashmir are attending this course. The organisations include the Population Welfare Department, Lady Health Workers Programme, Maternal and Child Health Programme, Directorate General of Health Services and others.