There is growing fury from students and teachers over the International Baccalaureate’s grading process after results were released this week.
Nearly 10,000 students have signed a Change.org petition calling for “justice” for this year’s candidates - adding to a separate petition calling for new grades.
Many students say they have received grades far below their teachers’ predictions - or have even lost out on their IB Diploma altogether despite high predicted grades.
Meanwhile, school leaders have reported that they are “losing faith” in the IB.
Following the cancellation of the IB exams in March after the outbreak of Covid-19, the organisation used a combination of teacher predicted grades, historic data and students’ coursework to calculate grades.
The IB also took the decision to take in and mark student internal assessments such as coursework, rather than using teacher-assigned marks for these.
Following results day on Monday, there has been mounting criticism of the grading process, with school leaders condemning the IB for its lack of ”transparency”.
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The Change.org petition, started by student Ali Zagmout, says: “So far, what we’ve seen is a great deal of injustice; many students around the world got significantly lower final grades than what they were predicted.”
“Essentially, the IB has lowered some students by up to 12 points! This is the first time in the history of IB that we see such substantial differences between the predicted grades and the final grades, on a large scale, considering that the IB examiners had no real grounds to evaluate and assign us our grades other than marking our coursework.”
Mr Zagmout said the IB should adjust its approach to grading to make it fairer to pupils.
The complaints have been echoed widely on social media, with many tweeting the hashtag #IBscandal.
Absolutely appalling to see how thousands of students have been robbed of their grades, all whilst claiming that the said process has been “fair”. It is anything but. #IBScandal
- ?. (@cyniqul) July 8, 2020
#ibscandal
I had never gotten a single 4 in my life on a report card, but somehow my ib grades were full of 4s. I got 10 points less than my predicted. My EE which received praise from my Psych teacher with a pHD ended up being a D. IB does this make any sense to you? ?
- Tara (@Dakura_Scarlet) July 8, 2020
The IB says it understands there have been “mixed emotions” regarding the outcomes this year, and that it used students’ coursework, school predicted grades and historic assessment data to calculate grades for this year.
A spokesperson said: “Prior to the attribution of final grades, this process was subjected to rigorous testing by educational statistical specialists to ensure our methods were robust. It was also checked against the last five years’ sets of results data, to ensure that it would provide reliable and valid grades for students.”
The IB said the stability of its results had been maintained for this exam series and that it was confident it had awarded grades in the “fairest and most robust way possible” this year.
