The IB Organization (International Baccalaureate) is an international educational board offering high school diplomas through affiliated schools in India. For the Diploma Programme of 2020, examinations were cancelled due to COVID-19. Grades were generated through an algorithm that takes in several inputs like student's own assessments, predicted grades, historical data of school, region, country etc. There has been zero transparency with regards to this algorithm, and IBO does not hold itself accountable to anyone. IBO, in its communication, has been extremely vague in describing the process by which it has generated the grades and the various factorials that have gone into the algorithm.
Overall, the grades for Diploma Programme 2020 have been unfair and abysmal. A majority of the people enrolled have missed their predicted grades by 3...6 points. Many of the people I know have either failed or missed their foreign university offers. They will now have to waste another year re-giving the Diploma. There has been outrage amongst parents, and despair amongst students.
As a student of the IB Organization, I deserve to know how my results were assessed. I deserve to know what factors were taken into the algorithm and how much weightage they were given. I deserve to know how the grades generated were disproportionately low to the grades of the previous years, and the hard work put in by me and my fellow students.
There are also other factors about the algorithm that the IB Organization is being extremely opaque about. For example,
1. How can the historical data of the school, region, country etc be used to assess the ability of a current student
2. According to several credible sources, the algorithm has inbuilt biases that scales down the grades of all students in a particular location (say Indian vs UK students)
3. How much of the grade was a result of my own work and how much was determined through predicteds, historical data etc.
What, if any, legal action would be appropriate in this case? Is a PIL forcing the IB Organization to reveal their grading process/algorithm possible? Or, would a writ make more sense. Please advise. Thanks.
