After listening to the perspectives and experiences of many students and parents in our grade, we have decided to jointly create this petition in order to ask for a change in how the end of year exams are going to be graded. We understand that the COVID-19 pandemic is not raging as strongly as the past 2 years, however some the negative effects of it still remain. In the past 2 years, exam grades that lowered the student’s average were not counted in the final grade, while exam grades that increased the students average were.

We have reached the conclusion that changing the grading of the exams to how they were in the past two years is appropriate due to 2 main reasons:

1- The large amount of graded work that was due during revision week and the week before

2- The effects of the COVID-19 virus that still affects us students

During revision week, which was meant to be exclusively for revision and preparation for the challenging exams we would take, many graded cumulative assignments were due. Some examples are: The ToK exhibition, a Portuguese summative essay, the draft for our Economics commentary 2 (IA), The draft for the Math exploration (IA), the ToK optional theme questions, the graded History questions, the Physics labs 1 and 2, and much more. Due to this heavy workload given to us, students had to dedicate a lot of their revision time completing these assignments as they were due during revision week. This prevented students from getting the proper amount of revision done, which will certainly result in lower exam scores. These exam scores are extremely important for every student in a grade, as they will contribute to what will be our predicted grades which are sent to colleges in our applications.

Throughout the whole school year, covid cases did not completely stop happening, with many students having to miss long periods of classes due to either having covid or being in contact with someone who had it. Although online classes were available for those who had to stay home, distance learning is not as effective as in person learning, which meant that a lot of the things taught in class would later have to be revised by students in DL on their own time. With a spike in covid cases happening in the past few weeks, a lot of students had to stay at home for extended periods of time as we were constantly in contact with most people in our grade. On top of that, this spike also resulted in a lot of teachers getting the virus, majorly during revision week. More than 4 teachers who teach major subjects had to stay home during revision week, with many of them sometimes feeling to sick to even join online classes. Although this was very unfortunate, and completely out of the control of both the school and the teachers, it has affected us greatly on our revision.

So we are asking for something that is within the control of the school, which can make it fairer for everyone impacted by unfortunate events. In the name of all parents and students of the current Year 11 class of 2023, we worryingly ask you to consider changing the way that our exams will be graded, so that it does not have a negative impact on our futures due to something our of our control. 

Sincerely, 

Class of 2023