The committee of contract teachers in the public sector issued a statement denouncing the improvised decisions by the education minister regarding the Brevet grading.
“The most sincere thing about the official exams is the joy of the parents,” they stated. “Blessed be their joy amid all the suffering and fear they have endured for the future of their children throughout the school year.”
The committee deemed the loss of credibility in the results of the official exams when the Minister of Education implemented different decisions before and after the grading.
The minister decided prior to the official exams to include school marks in the official examination grading.
However, after sorting the results, which showed a success exceeding 90% and distinctions above 70%, the Minister decided to cancel the calculation of school grades, bringing the success rate down to 79%, and the good and very good distinctions to 47%.
The statement included that “it is clear that the decisions are improvisational, and that the ministry’s realization of the incident that would have faced with the high rate of success and distinctions.”
The committee considered that the education minister, Abbas Al-Halabi, took the decision in anticipation of any drop in the success rate, and after the opposite became clear, he reversed his decision.
According to the committee, in order to justify his decision, the minister accused “private schools of setting high marks for students, without [him] announcing the direct educational inspection to hold those who manipulated the marks to account,” the statement said.
The statement mentioned the incident that took place on the night of the results, where a list was leaked exposing the personal data (phone numbers and email) of 55,793 students.
Shortly after, the ministry issued a circular denying this list that turned out to be correct and consistent with the official results.
The committee asked: “What about the students whose privacy was violated? What about the students who would have succeeded in calculating their school grades?”
“We hope that high school students will not go through the same bitter experience when announcing their results,” the statement concluded.