Decision taken not to re-conduct 2024 Grade 5 Scholarship exam

The Commissioner General of Examinations Amith Jayasundara announced that it was decided not to re-conduct the 2024 Grade 05 Scholarship Examination.

Furthermore, it has been decided to award free marks to all students for the 03 questions which were alleged to have been leaked.

Meanwhile, the evaluation of answer sheets, which had been temporarily suspended, is reportedly expected to commence immediately.

Several committees were appointed to investigate the scholarship examination, and their final conclusion was that only three questions had been leaked prior to the exam.

On September 20, an investigation was launched by the Department of Examinations after it was alleged that a question paper from the exam had been leaked. Later, the initial investigation report was handed over to the Criminal Investigation Department (CID), which also launched a separate investigation into the matter.

Meanwhile, the paper marking process of the Grade 5 Scholarship Examination, which was held on September 15, had been temporarily suspended, pending the investigation.

The Director of the Planning Division of the National Institute of Education (NIE) in Maharagama and a school teacher, who were arrested by the Criminal Investigations Department (CID) over the question paper issue, were remanded until October 22.

The arrested 58-year-old NIE Director was a member of the committee which prepared the 2024 Grade 05 Scholarship Examination paper, and the 49-year-old teacher had been conducting tuition classes for Grade 05 students.

The investigations had uncovered that only three questions from the exam had been leaked in advance. However, a group of parents, holding press conferences and staging protests on several occasions, had claimed that the entire question paper had been leaked.

The parents raised the issue with President Anura Kumara Dissanayake, and as a result, the evaluation of the answer sheets for the scholarship examination was suspended until the investigation was completed.

This year’s scholarship exam was held on September 15 at 2,849 centers across the island, with 323,879 candidates participating.