Dear Programme Chiefs and Heads of Departments,
 
Last week, some students of ISS college received the notice of the offline exam in April. We are very grateful to the college for informing students of this decision in advance, so as to help everyone to plan well in advance. However, due to the serious growing epidemic in Singapore, we, the present of MTech EBAC/IS/SE (Graduate Cert) Semester 2 2021/2022, would like to formally appeal to reconsider the exam arrangements and revert all the upcoming examination in April to be online for the following reasons:
 
1)    Although the Omicron virus is not very virulent, it has a very wide spread, a high risk of infection, possible sequelae, and the possibility of repeated infection by the same person. At present, the cumulative number of Covid-19 confirmed cases in Singapore has exceeded 500,000, with an increase of 20,000 confirmed cases per day (regardless of those who are not aware that they have caught a Covid). The total population of Singapore is only about 6,000,000, which means that the infection rate is over 8.33% in Singapore. If we have 50 students taking the exam at the same room for 3.5 hours offline, that means about 4.2 students (Covid-19 positive) may sit in the class. And considering the high transmission rate of Omicron, it is likely that more students will catch the Covid-19 after the long exam. Needless to say we have already known that some of our classmates in ISS are now suffering from positive Covid-19. Therefore, if the exam is still conducted offline, the probability of students and teachers get infected is extremely high.
 
2)    Once infected with the COVID-19, the returning progress of Chinese students will be seriously affected. The procedure of coming back to China and the physical examination after getting a COVID-19 will be more complicated than those who have not got. At present, people from China who have been diagnosed positively can only apply returning approval from Chinese Embassy again three months later after their recovery. We have a lot of Chinese students registered at ISS. For EBAC students who are taking the three-month internship, they will get their graduation certificates on 30th June, and the student pass will expire within one week after the graduation. For those who have recovered from the infection, the embassy's approval of returning procedure to China are long and complicated. For those who have not recovered, they must wait until becoming negative so that they can start the procedure of applying for coming back to China. Therefore,students may face the difficulty of coming back to China and illegal stay in Singapore once they got the COVID-19.
 
3)    Since the ISS graduate program is a one-year program, many of our classmates have already found our jobs at the end of last year, and will need to join by June/July/August this year. Once diagnosed with coronavirus, due to repeated “circuit breaker” of flights and the policy of returning to China, students who have found jobs are very likely to lose their hard-earned job opportunities because they cannot join the company on time, which may also hurt the employment rate of ISS graduate program this year. Currently due to Singapore’s serious COVID-19 situation and the continuous imported cases to China, many of the flights departing from Singapore in the next few months have been cancelled, causing it much harder for students to come back to China after their internships/classes.
 
4)    China adopts a very strict "Dynamic Zero" epidemic prevention policy, and those returning to China who have diagnosed with coronavirus overseas are very likely to be treated differently. Due to different epidemic prevention policies and national conditions, the social treatment of people diagnosed with the covid in different countries is also different. As far as China is concerned, even if they have recovered, the "diagnosing of  COVID-19" history will be recorded in personal information. Thus, they will have more complicated situations in career planning, daily life, including but not limited to being highly concerned by residents in the same community and being ostracized by colleagues due to no-symptom covid and false-negative.
 
5)    Last semester's final exam was successfully conducted online, so we think the exam for this semester may also copy the mode from last semester. In the final exam last semester, students completed the test online through the zoom conference. The online test method not only allowed the students to have more time to answer the questions, but also facilitated the students to review. In the usual classroom, almost all students use paperless learning. If they want to take offline exams, then all students need to prepare a paper note again. Also, both students and ISS will have to print out all of our prepared materials and exam papers for the exam, which is not very environmentally friendly. This work will undoubtedly reduce the review efficiency to a certain extent, adding a lot of time cost. Moreover, most lessons in this semester (such as PLP), have been successfully conducted virtually and we see no reason to change the final examination into a physical one.
 
To sum up, we believe that if the offline exam is still conducted, everyone needs to take a very high risk for this exam. This is not only for teachers and students’ health, but also for the employment of students and the employment rate of colleges. We fully understand that college's decision is in response to government requirements, but based on the above-mentioned special circumstances, we really hope that the college will give full consideration to the above factors before making a final decision on how the exam will be conducted.