New Grading System for Matric and Intermediate Results
‘F’ grade and marks are over. How will the new matriculation and intermediate result system work in Pakistan?
In Pakistan, the process of producing matric and intermediate examination results is being changed. According to the new system, after the exams, the result will no longer be in marks but in grades and these grades will also determine the final grading points i.e. GPA.
This means that after 2025, when the new system will be fully implemented after passing through three phases, there will be no marks on the result cards of matric and intermediate students. In their place, the grades and grading points obtained in each subject separately and in aggregate will be recorded. Finally, the Cumulative CGPA will also be recorded.
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Another development in the new system is that ‘F’ grade i.e. ‘Fail’ will be done away with completely. It will be replaced by a ‘U’ grade which means ‘unsatisfactory’ meaning the performance of the student receiving this grade is ‘not satisfactory.
In the old system, when a student had to pass a subject, he needed at least 33 or 33% marks. In the new system, this pass scale will be changed from 33% to 40%. The implementation of this new system will be uniform throughout the country and it has been started from the current academic year i.e. 2023.
This means that the new system grades will appear on the result cards after the 2024 exams. This also means that the ‘merit’ system for admission to various professional colleges and universities in Pakistan will also change. For example, earlier in the race for admissions to medical colleges, candidates knew the minimum marks they would need to get admission.
According to the new system, this competition will now shift to CGPA. So the question here is whether this change will bring any significant change in the quality of education in Pakistan or not?
Is there a new grading system? Executive Director of IBCC Dr. Ghulam Ali Malah said that the new system of giving examination results is in line with the modern procedure practiced in the rest of the world. He says that when he set out to find an alternative to the old system, two types of international approaches were examined.
They had a points system from 9 to 1 or the other is a 7-point system of English alphabets.
According to him, “We decided to adopt this system because it is already practiced in one form or another and people are aware of it”. However, the new system to be introduced in Pakistan will be ten-point instead of seven-point.
According to this new system of ten points, A Plus Plus will be the first grade. It will be given to the students who perform 95% to 100%. This would mean ‘exceptional’ and would have 5 grading points, the highest GP limit.
Similarly, the A Plus will have a GP of 4.7 and the efficiency will be between 90 and 95 percent. Thus the tenth and last grade will be ‘U’ i.e. ‘Unsatisfactory’ which will be awarded for less than 40% performance and its GPA will be zero.
Dr. Ghulam Ali Malah says, “This would mean that the student’s performance is not satisfactory and he needs to retake the exam.” The U grade would essentially replace the F grade and any essays Or the overall session pass threshold will be 40% performance.
How is this system different from the old system?
In the old system, the results of the examinations were primarily based on marks, which were used to determine the grades, but there was no involvement of GP or CGPA. This system basically consists of 6 points of English alphabet.
It has the highest grade A and the worst grade F, which means fail. The word ‘FAIL’ is entered against it which is part of the result card. It should be noted that the modern international system of examinations does not allow the word ‘fail’ to appear in the field of educational quality.
Dr. Ghulam Ali Malah told BBC that under the old system, students were given marks and their performance was evaluated only on that. It may not necessarily reflect their actual performance. Similarly, he adds, there was no way to give feedback to the student about his performance on the result cards under the old system, unlike the new system has been added.
According to him, the new result cards that will come now will have numbers in the first phase along with GP and grades like GP 5 and Grade A Plus Plus but when it will be fully implemented. The numbers will be completely gone.
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