An educational psychological analysis of year 5 scholarship examination in Sri Lanka

Abstract

The year 5 scholarship examination is not only an examination, but also a social issue with educationists, media personnel and politicians the whole Sir Lankan society has an interest on this issue. From student point of view this examination is a big challenge that affects their future as well as their mental health. The objective of this study is to examine whether year 5 scholarship examination has a real validity, as it is supposed to be an intelligent test to measure the educational performance of the students. In this study the educational performance of240 students was investigated from year 5 to 0/L s was investigated Then among the students some have passed the examination and others did not. Then performance of the two groups in 0/L s was also examined. A limitation of this study was the inability of finding out the A/L results of these groups. To avoid this limitation a third group of 250 students from the faculties of social sciences, humanities, commence and management, science, medical faculties was selected and their year 5 examination results were scrutinized. The objective of this survey was to investigate the future educational performances of the students both who passed and failed the year 5 scholarship examination and to decide whether this examination is successful enough to indicate their ability.