Managing Students Examination - School's View

Malaysia DCA had started the part 66 examination in Jan 2013. It is commendable effort to solve the long waiting list, but it is not without any issues.

The present examination system is focused on the individual students. These are the processes...

1. candidates register with the DCA as a candidate. This is a semi-manual process and the potential candidates have to show his/her legal existence.

2. The DCA will verify and register him/her as an approved candidate.

3. Once a registered candidate, he/she can register to sit for examination. This has to be done by the candidates personally.


 The mode of communication is between the authority (DCA) and the students. There is no provision for block registration, which is the characteristic of a part 147 schools. The school want to control and monitor their own students.

There are various ways an approved 147 goes about to respond to the short coming. These are the examples:

1. One school acts on behalf of the students. That mean the school will have to create one e-mail account for each students. Then the school has to use the created email to register the students individually. Once registered the school will act as the students in the dealings with the authority.

2. Another school is doing the opposite. Eveything were left to the students even to the days of the exams were managed by the students. This does seem to create problems to the students, the time was not given to the students to prepare for the exam.

In my opinion, the middle approach may be a better approach. Students can be made to to take responsibility for specific task. Specific activities can be used a the control mechanism. For proof of registration to be used for enrollment to join the next module. For example, to sit for module 11A, the student must shown the proof that they had sit for the Module 3 examination.

Managing the students examination is critical for the success of the students. Without the control mechanism, the students performance may not be traceable.
    

Planning for Exams

On of the task to be taken by an approved school is to prepare the students for the examination. The examinations are conducted by the country's airworthiness authority. In Malaysia, the authority is DCA (Department of Civil Aviation Malaysa), in UK is the British CAA. The Malaysian DCA  produces the Airworthiness Notice, AN1101, giving the guides and the requirements to acquire the license. The requirements are aligned to the EASA articles, however, getting the Malaysia License does not entitle the holder to hold the EASA license.


EASA allowed two approaches to manage and operate the examinations. They are...

1. Examinations are managed and conducted  by the country's authority.
2. The country's authority may delegate the role of holding the examinations and marking the papers to an approved 147 school.

The approach in Malaysia is slightly different, all examinations are done online and conducted by DCA Malaysia. However, approved training organisations may manage the examination centers. The training organisation needs to prepare the computers and network infrastructure to meet the requirements of  an approved examination center to manage the examination.

One the issues to be decided by the training center is to come up with an approved scheduling model. The modular exams enables the students to sit for the paper as early as in year 1. This is different from the previous section L BCAR exam, where the candidate has to be at least 3 years undergoing the training.

academic grading

My school is basically an EASA 147 school. However, due to the requirements of a number of sponsors, we have to provide an academic grading system using the CGPA system.

We had a short meeting and decided that the system will comprise of three items:

1. The policy of examination marking and records.

2. The scored points

3. The Credit Hours.

A. The Policy

Being a maintenance 147 school, our marking system, records and archive with have to comply to requirements of the local civil aviation requirements. As such

the grade point and the CGPA will only be a secondary data extracted from the original 147 marking system. The 147 schools normally use % marking system, where 100% is the mark if you get all the questions right.

B. The Scored points

This is grade point equivalent to the percentage marking. The following points system is used.

85-100 A 4.00

80-84 A- 3.67

75-79 B+ 3.33

C. The credit hours

This is the system to convert the hours taught to the figure to indicate the importance of the module. A score of grade point of 4 for module 1, which is taught within 72 hours should have a lower significant compared to module 6, which are taught in a longer time.

Calculation Of CGPA

The standard academic calculation is used.