After other UK boards, Cambridge IGCSE, A-Levels now also ‘cancelled’ in UAE

Dubai: UAE-based colleges are effectively ready to award “fair” last grades for college kids not sitting UK and IB board exams this 12 months, educators mentioned, now that Cambridge Worldwide has repotedly additionally cancelled its exams within the UAE

On Tuesday, Tes (Instances Training Complement) mentioned on its web site that Cambridge Worldwide, which is one among different predominant UK boards, “confirmed the news in a statement sent to Tes”. The assertion reads: “Following a directive from the Ministry of Education in the UAE, cancelling all international exams, we will work with schools to ensure students entered for the June 2021 exam series can still receive grades using teacher assessment.”

It follows final week’s announcement by the Ministry of Training that such UK and IB colleges can use “alternative assessment methods” for the present educational 12 months. The announcement got here in opposition to the backdrop “changing circumstances” – with IGCSE and A-Degree exams already being cancelled by most UK boards for the June collection.

The IB (Worldwide Baccalaureate) in the meantime is providing a “dual route” for the Could examination session, that means written exams will probably be held the place attainable. In any other case, a mix of inner evaluation coursework and teacher-predicted grades could be adopted, the place written exams usually are not attainable.

Earlier this 12 months, when UK boards introduced exams had been cancelled within the UK, college students within the UAE had been involved they'd be deprived to take a seat the exams whereas their counterparts within the UK didn't need to do the identical.

Hornsby mentioned: “The UK and most of the international awarding bodies for IGCSEs and A-Levels had already made the decision to cancel examinations by early February and move to teacher-assessed grades. This was in line with last summer, and schools and teachers have developed considerable expertise in awarding accurate grades that students deserve. With many students studying a mixture of UK and international syllabus qualifications, we now have a fair system for all students with all IGCSE and A-level summer examinations now being cancelled in the UAE.”

Beheshti mentioned lecturers should assess college students’ efficiency on particular tasks, coursework and content material, and are inspired to attract on proof of efficiency all through the period of the educational 12 months to tell their judgement, quite than a brief time frame. She added that heads of faculties will probably be required to substantiate that college students have been taught ample content material to permit development to the subsequent stage of their schooling by way of steady cooperation with the boards and the ministry.

“There is still some subjectivity in the process but these measures clearly demonstrate an attempt to increase to steer the ship the other way, so to speak… The primary exam boards most private schools in the UAE work with have worked hard to ensure a fair process for assessing grades, since relying on subjective measures such as teacher predictions only can be unreliable and sometimes detrimental to student outcomes,” she added.

Beheshti mentioned APs (Superior Placement programs) are an choice for college kids eager to “either accelerate their learning or provide an extra-layer of security to subjective grades”. This is applicable particularly to college students making use of to US universities, a lot of whom dropped the requirement for SAT take a look at scores.

“That is partly as a result of admissions officers don’t have the identical relationships with or information about colleges around the globe as they do with colleges within the US. They've concern over points akin to grade inflation or having much less management over the rigor of assessments and grading mechanisms in some international locations.

“Without standardised tests, they could not compare students across curricula in the same way. Similarly, in the absence of standardised processes for A-Level, IB and even National exams, universities will be reluctant to admit students without alternative, objective measures of academic performances.”

Superior Placement programs are one-year-long college-level programs for highschool college students within the American curriculum which might be exam-based. College students from all curricula can take AP topics on high of their common course load and obtain faculty credit for them whereas nonetheless in highschool. That, Beheshti mentioned, can allow them to bypass required courses in faculty or to graduate early.

The Superior Placement programme is created by the Faculty Board, which additionally created different exams such because the SAT. Crimson International Academy is a registered AP college and permits college students to enrol in AP courses on-line to take after college or on weekends.