Grading discrimination
Bangladesh is a country in which trial and error approach is widely used in designing and implementing policies. It is true in case of national economic plans or even educational policies. Our political governments are likely to materialize their own political agenda while they are in power. That's why we observe the frequent change of national policies with handing over of power from one party to another. Political parties may argue for changing national policies with the logic that the landscape of modern world is frequently changing. So they have to develop new policies and strategies to meet the challenge of the twenty-first century. We do accept their logic in this regard. But, we observe, in case of Bangladesh, that our political governments are introducing new policies without making any comprehensive cost-benefit analysis.
Introduction of grading system in SSC & HSC examinations since 2001 and 2003 respectively is one kind of trial and error approach because the then government started the grading system without any necessary preparation. As a result, the students of 2001-2003 batches were victimized in terms of GPA. In the first batch of the grading system we observed the additional subject marks would not be added to the total grade point. Later, it was revised and now the mark of additional subject is added to the total GPA. However, we would like to thank the education ministry for circulating the guideline on equating the grade point with the traditional marking system for the batches of 2001-2003.
We all know that the University Grants Commission (UGC) has introduced a Uniform Grading Scheme, for the preparation of results, to be followed by all the public and private universities in Bangladesh from the session 2006-2007. But once again we are now discriminated against in the calculation of CGPA in higher education. The Business Faculty of Dhaka University, for example, had been following the traditional grading system since the inception of BBA programme in which the highest grade was 'A' ( 80% and above) but in the present Uniform Grading Scheme the highest grade is 'A+' ( 80% and above). If we compare the present grading system to the traditional one, then we can see getting the same number one student get 'A+' where as the other one is awarded 'A' just only because of following the traditional grade scheme. This is applicable for other grades such as the traditional A-, B+, B and B- being now considered as A, A-, B+ and B respectively. Now we see that the leading private organisations, especially banks, are now pursuing the Uniform Grading Scheme while posting job circular. They even demand CGPA 3.5 and above which means the Uniform Grading Scheme's students can easily fulfil the requirement but the Traditional Grading Scheme's students can not fulfil the requirement though they have got the same number compared to the Uniform Grading Scheme's students.
So we urge the UGC and DU authorities to publish our BBA results by converting the traditional grading result into the Uniform Grading Scheme. This can easily be done as the combined BBA results have not been published.
Finally, we do not want to get penalized any more due to frequent policy changes.
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