Mockery of mock test
In July, 2008 a renowned English medium school suddenly changed their curriculum from EDEXCEL system to Cambridge System without discussing their decision with the parents/guardians of the concerned students. The school administration first signed the contract with the University of Cambridge for the GCE O Level then informed the parents/guardians. A few of the renowned English medium schools in Dhaka city have also switched to the Cambridge system but they had trained their teachers through a series of training programmes organised by the CIE prior to switching to the new system. They also discussed the pros and cons of the Cambridge system with the parents/guardians a number of times before taking the final decision. Unfortunately, the school mentioned above did neither. They never sought the opinions of the concerned parents/guardians treating their students as guinea pigs while they threw the innocent students into a new system of which the school authority had no clue. The school administration warned their first batch of students (appearing the CIE GCE O Level in May 2010) that their Mock Test questions and answer scripts would be sent to the UK to be examined by the Cambridge authorities and only the successful candidates would be allowed to appear in the GCE O Level examinations to be held in May 2010. To our utter surprise, we discovered that the questions of every subject of the Mock Test, which commenced in mid February 2010, were exactly the same as those of the GCE O Level Examination held in November 2009. In fact, the school authorities merely "photocopied" the questions downloaded from the Internet. The school authorities didn't even bother to remove the date printed on the footnote of the original examination. Now the students are just memorising the answers of the questions of November, 2009 overnight and spewing them out on the very next day. This has become an absolute mockery.
The education authorities should look into all such matters.
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