Dear Parents and Guardians,
Mount Sinai International School would like to officially inform all Parents, Guardians and students that on the 23rd of March 2020 Cambridge International Examinations took the decision to cancel the IPP, Checkpoint Secondary and IGCSE May/June 2020 examinations. The decision to cancel the exams was taken due to the COVID-19 pandemic and this decision has affected all Schools that run the Cambridge International Examinations worldwide.
The School has been in frequent communication with Cambridge since the notice of the cancellation of examinations was given. Cambridge has provided feedback that they will be looking into ways that students can achieve the grades for the May/June series with the possibility of Schools using School based assessments including mock exam results, subject coursework and predicted grades to come up with the final grade.
Cambridge has also given the School the option to defer our candidate entries for the April 2020 International Primary Program and Secondary Checkpoint and the May/June 2020 IGCSE examination series to the October/ November 2020 examination series.
Mount Sinai International School has opted to defer our candidate entries to the October/ November series for the following reasons:
1.      Lack of accuracy of predicted grades- basing final grades on Teacher predicted grades runs the risk of inflating students’ achievement if the grades given are much higher than a student would have achieved in an exam. On the other hand, the predicted grades may also not be a true reflection of the student’s ability if the predicted grade given is too conservative.
2.      Predicted grades are submitted by our Teachers to Cambridge months prior to give an indication of what the overall Student and School achievement may be. The predicted grades are given before the final School Mock examinations or external examinations take place and do not take into account the student’s performance after the entire subject syllabus has been completed and assessed.
3.      Students who receive predicted grades for the May/June 2020 series can dispute the grade through the dispute process and will be given a chance to re-write the exam in May/June 2021, one year later.
4.      Cambridge will not be refunding any Schools for the examination fees already paid even if the School opts to use the predicted grades for students to receive a certificate. MSIS has officially withdrawn our candidates for the May/June 2020 series and the examination fee payment will be held as a credit on our account to use for our candidates in the October/November 2020 examination series. This payment will be used for new exams and to pay the international examiners in October/November 2020.
We fully understand that this is a difficult time for our students who have been working very hard towards these final International Examinations and that deferring the examinations may not be the first choice for our students who would have wanted to write the exams as soon as possible. However, as a School we believe that deferring candidates to the October/ November 2020 examination series will give the School and the Students a greater advantage as we will have ample time to prepare for the examinations extensively and our students will be the ones to reap the benefits of extra time.
The Students in Years 6, 9 and 11 will be required to report back to School for the Third term (20th April to 10th July 2020) as normal and during this term our Teachers will ensure that more work is done in terms of revision and assessment in preparation for the final examinations to be held in October/November 2020. The School will reopen for the new 2020/2021 Academic year in September 2020. The Students will be moved forward to the next class therefore;
·         Year 6 IPP cohort will write their IPP examinations in the first term of Year 7
·         Year 9 Checkpoint Secondary cohort will write their examinations in the first term of Year 10
·         Year 11 IGCSE cohort will attend School for an extra term (First term only)
MSIS Management acknowledges that Parents and Guardians have sacrificed their time and finances in support of their child and the School at large. We appreciate all that you do and as a gesture of good faith the School Management will be providing a discount in School fees for the First Term of the 2020/2021 Academic year (September to December 2020 only) to students in the above examination classes who have been affected by the deferring of the May/June 2020 examination series to the October/ November 2020 examination series.
Sincerely,
Dr. D.K. Mvula
MSIS Managing Director