High school pass rate drops 6% after grading system finalized a week before exams, students, parents take complaints to president

A group of parents submitted complaints about the education minister at the presidential palace in Cairo and are in the process of filing complaints with the public prosecutor, one of the mothers told Mada Masr, after the Education Ministry introduced a new system for recording answers and grading papers just a few weeks before high school finals.

When students began their last year of high school in September 2020, they started practicing in preparation for the July tests using digital tablets to record, save and assess their answers. Four weeks before the tests, students were told they would be taking them with a new “mixed” examination system that would require them to record their answers to multiple-choice questions twice — once on the tablet devices provided by schools, and then a second time on a physical paper. The physical paper would be scanned digitally to assess their final grade, while the answers on the tablet would be recorded and used if students wished to contest the results when they came out in August.

After widespread complaints about the mixed system, Education Minister Tarek Shawky scrapped the tablet system to announce one week before the tests that exams would be paper-based only, and that grades would be determined only by the digital scanners grading students’ answers on the physical sheet. 

When results from the new system were released on August 17, teenagers across the country were disappointed with grades that represented a six percent drop in the national pass rate in comparison to last year.

The official complaints are the latest form of protest action that students and parents have taken to confront the government about the results for the thanaweya amma exams that determine entry to competitive higher education institutions.

On August 18, students and parents began to hold daily demonstrations outside the Education Ministry. Students and parents insist that the papers should be regraded by hand; that students who failed more than two subjects should be allowed to retake the exams this year on an exceptional basis; that the ministry should publish answer forms so that students can calculate the grades themselves; and that university applications should be frozen until the problem is resolved so that students who are suing for their grades to be reviewed will not have their options limited. MP Ehab Ramzy has also submitted a request to the speaker for Shawky to respond to the House of Representatives given that the quantity of complaints about the results suggests an error in the grading system.

The protestors outside the ministry were surrounded by security forces and some were assaulted and had their phones confiscated, while others were taken, held briefly and ultimately released from a police station, according to two sources who were at the demonstrations who spoke to Mada Masr on condition of anonymity.

In a response to the outcry, Shawky spoke on television the following night to say that the ministry would allow for parents and students to apply for their exam results to be reviewed, though he stressed that any regrading would be done using the same digital scanners. 

Shawky said that students will be allowed a second attempt at two exams in retakes which could allow some students to pass the thanaweya amma in the same year, although he pointed out that the retake grades are capped at a maximum of 50 percent. He said he wishes to change these rules.

Shawky was also explicit in dismissing the complaints of protesting parents and their demands for students to be allowed to retake all of their subjects, ridiculing the parents and students protesting outside the ministry by saying that none had achieved higher than 30 percent on the exams.

Though admission grades have been lowered at universities to accommodate this year’s grades, an Education Ministry platform opened on August 21 for people to contest the grades received 215,000 complaints about the results in under 24 hours.

Several parents headed on the night of August 22 to the Ettehadiya Presidential Palace, where they delivered complaints against the education minister to an official from the presidential secretariat due to their children failing the thanaweya amma exams, a high school student’s mother told Mada Masr. 

She added that the parents who went to Ettehadiya on Sunday night were planning to file complaints to the public prosecutor against the education minister.

The mother said that her daughter, a high school senior in Giza who had chosen to specialize in sciences, had scored 41 percent in the exams overall, failing in four subjects: results the mother said did not reflect her daughter’s performance in previous school years. She questioned the digital grading system that was introduced for the first time in the 2020/21 academic year, saying, “it is my right, after 12 years of hard work and effort to make her useful for her country and 13 months’ hard work from her, to know if [our children] are failures,” and saying the exams should be marked by teachers. 

A student who participated in the protests outside the Education Ministry said that despite taking private lessons all year, using all the online platforms promoted by the ministry and paying for the school tablet device, “a large part of the [content in the] exams was not from the syllabus, not even from the textbooks we took with us [into the exam room], and the exams needed more time.”

The student, who failed three subjects and will therefore have to repeat the year, complained that pupils had been trained all year to take the exams on the tablet devices, before the system changed last-minute to the paper answer sheets. They added that the ministry had said there would be room for students to retake tests without an impact on their final grades, but that it ultimately reverted to the rules that allow only two retakes capped at 50 percent.

Shawky had spoken publicly in favor of a bill that his ministry has worked on since 2018 which would make grading cumulative across the three high school years, would make all tests digital and which would give students the opportunity to retake final exams multiple times with fees of up to an upper limit of LE5,000 per retake. However, the bill was rejected in April by the Senate on the grounds that the retake fees compromised constitutional guarantees on the provision of free education, while concerns were also raised about using digital means only for the exams. The Cabinet withdrew the bill for revision in May, with Shawky confirming in June — one month before the exams — that the ministry would stick with the existing system for retakes this academic year.

Mariam, another student specializing in sciences who failed in one subject and received 54 percent in total, told Mada Masr that she and the rest of the students weren’t sure of the rubric for the paper answer sheets. “In the exam room, they told us that if I marked two circles by mistake, I should put a big X on the mark that was wrong, and that the sheet would be graded manually. I now know that this would give me half a grade [for that question],” she said. Mariam, who wanted to study applied arts, said she would have to retake an exam, meaning that she will have to put in her university applications during the third stage of intakes and will likely have her choices limited to private universities with high fees.

After students took the thanaweya amma exams in early July, they told Mada Masr that they found the technicalities around the physical answer sheets stressful, and complained about the length of the exam questions and the similarity of multiple-choice answers.

Rather than the digital grading system, Shawky has attributed the drop in students’ grades to a new assessment method, which he said now measures students’ ability to understand, apply and analyze where the old system catered instead to rote learning. Shawky blamed students for adhering to traditional methods of study and to private lessons outside of school hours.

Universities opened to applicants on Saturday, though the ministry is set to continue receiving students’ complaints until the end of this week, while the complaints will be reviewed until September 13.

Mada Masr tried to obtain a comment from Education Ministry spokesperson Mahmoud Hassouna, but did not receive a response until the time of writing.