One of the P6 classes on which the new grading system will be introduced

A new grading and reporting system will be introduced at the end of this year's national examinations for P6 and S5 students, the Ministry of Education announced on Wednesday November 19.

According to education officials, the new system will take into account several factors to determine grades more comparatively, including the overall performance of a group of students and the difficulty of exams.

Detailing the new grading system, the ministry's Director of Assessment and Testing, Egbert Benstrong, said it would consist of an eight-point grade scale ranging from A* for exceptional level to G, the minimum level, for a pass, instead of the 16-point grade starting from A+ to J that was being applied before.

Under the new system, three categories of pass marks will be introduced, namely a Distinction for grades A and A*, Credit Pass for C and B and Ordinary Pass from D to G.

However, the 8-point grading format will not necessarily mean that for a student to achieve an A he or she must score between 80 percent and 100 percent, as was the case before.

"The grade the students will receive will depend on the general performance of all the students who have sat the exam, the subject taken and the difficulty level of the exam," Mr Benstrong explained.

The implementation of the new system, Mr Benstrong said, would rely on chief examiners, as it would be their own assessment of the examinations that would determine the course of the grading system.

"At the end of the exam we would be asking them to recommend the minimum cut-off scores for the various grades," Mr Benstrong explained.  "Based on the students' performance, the examiners will tell us what they think should qualify the students to earn a grade A or C, and we will work on their recommendations statistically to produce the final grades."

This means that depending on the performance of all the students and the recommendation made by the examiners, the percentage required for an A grade could fall below 80 percent.

The traditional grading system, Mr Benstrong said, was a convenient way of marking an examination, but "There are no rules which say that an A has to be 80 percent to 100 percent, a B 60 to 79 and so on for all subjects."

According to Mr Benstrong, it is also not fitting to apply the same testing scales and grades for all subjects since they all have their specific standards.

Providing examples, he said "Under the new system, a student can receive an A for scores ranging between 72 to 79 for English, for Maths an A can be between 69 to 79 and for French it can be between 74 to 85."

The new grading system, Mr Benstrong said, was the same as what was used for Cambridge IGCSE exams, and was being adopted since Seychelles and the United Kingdom had certain similarities in their education system.

He added that everywhere in the world grading systems tended to change and vary in accordance with students' performance.

Asked whether a drop in the percentage needed for an A, for example, as compared to the current system, would not mean a fall in the education standard, Mr Benstrong said that the ministry was working on a framework of national standards with specific criteria that students at all levels of education would have to achieve at the end of their studies.

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