ISLAMABAD: While the Pakistan Medical Commission (PMC) has announced that over 55pc of candidates cleared the National Medical and Dental Colleges Admission Test (MDCAT), some students have expressed their grievances claimed they were given less marks or declared absent.

However, an official of the PMC claimed that as an unprecedented exercise was carried out by the commission there can be a few anomalies. He suggested to the candidates to lodge their complaints on the website of the commission.

The medical colleges` entrance test was held on Nov 29 in which 121,310 candidates had appeared. The commission decided to give another chance to 138 candidates who were suffering from Covid-19.

However, in a statement issued on Wednesday, the PMC claimed that 121,181 students [129 less than the earlier figure mentioned in the statement issued on the day of theexam] had appeared in the test. The dif ference can be doubled by including candidates who were suffering from Covid-19. However, it was not confirmed how many students had appeared in the exam.

The statement claimed that 67,611 students qualified for the admission in medical and dental colleges by obtaining more than 60pc marks. The exam was held across Pakistan, Azad Kashmir and Gilgit-Baltistan with a second special exam held on Dec 13 for students who could not attend the first exam due to being Covid-19 positive.

`A post exam analysis including a reliability item analysis in line with international standards and best practices was carried out of MDCAT. The analysis included a discrimination index and an item wise analysis of all 200 questions on the basis of answers given and the topic syllabus as approved by the Academic Board. Questions found to be ambiguous on analysis of the answers by students and the formation of the question itself or which were below the cut off benchmark of the discrimination index were assessedand equalbenentgiventoallstudentsensuring no student is adversely affected,` it stated.

`From the MDCAT exam, a total of 14 questions with seven in biology, five in physics and one in chemistry were post analysis taken out of the scoring and all students received maximum marks for these questions. Seven questions were similarly taken out of the scoring and all students have received maximum marks for these questions,` the statement added.

`It is clarified that the questions taken are not removed on the basis of being out of the syllabus but rather based on the examination standards of ambiguity and discrimination.

The ambiguity is caused in part due to different textbooks being employed in different parts of Pakistan which may not be fully compliant with the relevant Board of Curriculum or otherwise by the formation of the question itself.

`Post analysis the exam achieved a 0.96 on the Cronbach`s alpha (on a range from 0 to 1 with 1 being maximum) which is a standard todetermine the measure of internal consistency and scale reliability of an exam. Hence the exam is determined to be extremely reliable and consistent with its structure and objectives,` said the statement.

However, a number of students have objected to the result and believed that they were either not awarded grace marks or there was an error in marking.

One of the candidates, Ali Subhan, told Dawn that grace marks were not given to students of group C.

`A number of students in my group have obtained fewer marks as compared to candidates placed in other groups despite the fact that we and students of other groups were expecting similar marks,` he said.

Another student, Awais Khalid, said a number of students attempted questions which have been marked under a formula correctly but they also got fewer marks as same formula was applied for all students who had marked the correct answers or wrong ones.

`There should be formula for those who failed to solve those questions and maximummarks should be given to those who marked correct answers. We had a meeting with PMC Vice President Ali Raza in which he said out of syllabus MCQs will be deleted and objection forms will be given to students but they were either not available or it was told that students should fill them within the time of exam,` he said.

Zahiruddin, father of student Anosh Zahir, said his daughter appeared in MDCAT but had been declared absent in the result.

`Moreover, the name of Mohammad Aslam is mentioned in front of roll number allotted to my daughter,` he said.

According to the PMC statement issued after criticism started on social media following complaints showing some students to be incorrectly marked absent, the result is being reconciled.

`The updated results will be available on the website shortly. As it is a computer generated result, therefore, to check for any discrepancy the system has been made offline. It will be live as soon as the error has been checked,` it stated.