ENTRANCE EXAMINATION PROCEDURE
The first year examination is based upon papers in Greek, Maths and English. Whilst the paper in English is diagnostic and thus does not influence actual results, it should be remembered that a poor performance in this paper is likely to pose subsequent problems for a pupil in an English medium school.
The content of the three papers is based upon the relevant aged based curriculum for public schools (years 5 and 6 Demotico) and all papers are designed to assess future potential. The school believes very firmly that excessive coaching for these papers is not necessary and may indeed prove counter-productive since a reliance on such tuition can lead to formulaic thinking and an inability to handle more open-ended questions.
The results of the Greek and Maths papers (both equally weighted) are simply added together and the pass list is generated from this figure. Thus the top 96 candidates are offered places and approximately the next thirty in rank order are placed on a waiting list. The same procedure applies to Turkish Cypriot pupils sitting papers in Turkish and Maths and here up to 24 places are available, awarded again in rank order.
The school considers that the process for marking papers is scrupulous and totally anonymous, since no names appear on candidates' papers. In practice candidates fill out a small cover sheet before each examination, so that nothing is written on the exam paper apart from their answers. At the conclusion of the examination, all scripts are taken to the Head Teacher's Office where he and three members of the Senior Management team immediately remove the cover sheets and each script is stamped with a new random identification number and these are the numbers which appear on the internal pass list which is ultimately generated. Thus no-one is aware at any stage in the process of candidates' names or even their original registration numbers.
Papers are marked by all members of the relevant Departments and in practice each paper is marked and remarked by a second marker on the Saturday. All marking takes place in school and at other times papers are locked in the school safe. These marks are then collated on the Sunday but in order to avoid problems with requests for re-marking the School has introduced a further check on the Monday. Papers of candidates on the waiting list (and those immediately above and below this group- precise numbers to be determined by actual marks) have their papers checked again by two markers and again at this stage the papers are identified only by the random identification numbers. All marking and assessment is carried out only by members of Staff and the SMT. The announcement of results takes place at 14.00 on the Tuesday but at this stage the results will be definitive since borderline candidates will have been thoroughly re-assessed.
The school is aware that the examination process is inevitably a stressful one but believes that its process is both fair and transparent and thus many of the allegations which are made about it are very far from reality. In practice it gives all candidates an equal chance and subsequent research taking into account the longer term has shown that the papers do select the appropriate pupils for the school.