Impact of the Selection of Streams on High Failure Rate in Advanced Level Examination

Abstract

In the current environment, it is witnessed that a significant number of talented students are being failed at the General Certificate of Education Advanced Level (G.C.E A/L) examination especially under Mathematics stream. But it is more surprising that majority out of them have passed the General Certificate of Education Ordinary Level (G.C.E. O/L) examination with flying colours. At the same time, students who have not performed at a very best level in their O/L examination are being successful in A/Ls by selecting some other stream except Mathematics or Bio Science. Thus the decision of selecting Advanced level stream would be a crucial factor for a student’s future. With respect to A/L Mathematics it should emphasized that the failure rate is extremely high and at present no proper mechanism has been identified to address the issue. Thus this study focuses on the issue of high failure rate in Mathematics stream of Advanced Level Examination which has been analyzed using association rules in data mining techniques. In addition, a pattern that will be helpful to reduce the failure rate by directing students with right talent to Mathematics stream by comparing the G.C.E A/L results and corresponding G.C.E. O/L results has also been identified. For this study, A/L examination results of students who sat for the examination under Mathematics stream for two years (2007 and 2010) were taken into consideration. In addition, the corresponding Ordinary Level results of the same set of students were taken accordingly. From the analysis carried out it was found out that there is a direct impact of O/L Mathematics and Science results of a student on his/her overall A/L examination result in Mathematics stream. Further it was evident that one must obtain the best results for these two subjects in order to perform well at the A/L examination. Moreover it was found out that there are few other subjects that a student must focus on if he/she is planning to follow Mathematics for A/Ls namely; Religion, Social Studies, First Language and Technical subject.