Badri's A level exam results were declared a few weeks ago. He got an A* in Computer Science and a d in English (AS). He was unfazed and had not "expected" or "not expected" any grade. And there the matter rested for a few days. But Sonati and I were not easy about this.

He had "studied" even less for his O Level English, and had got an A grade (or was it a B? I forget). Sonati and my gut feeling was that there was something wrong.

Badri was no help because he said (admittedly, in answer to a leading question) that he would not have been surprised if he had got a C in Computer Science.

The school was discouraging; admittedly in good faith: "Just a caution - last year we did request this for our Art students, who received a lower grade than expected even by the expert external assessor. They had worked like mad for two years and expected a grade or two higher! But the response we got from CIE after re-eval was very disapppointing. It seemed to be the same person, and it was the same grade, with NO explanation of why they had done poorly that made any sense to us..." and "Some thoughts about the English exam. I feel it is not a trivial exam; as an estimate, students in the past have spent up to fifty hours (over about three months) preparing for it. Preparation included reading and understanding a textbook that explained basic concepts, working through several sets of exam papers and coming to a teacher for feedback, ideas for improving writing etc. Even with all this, some students only did moderately well."

And the fee for the re-eval was 40 pounds per paper! That's 80 pounds for two English papers times n rupees per pound! Bloody hell.

Then I awoke one morning with the remembrance of something similar from my Class 11 Chemistry exam at Xavier's. I was travelling home on the bus with my Chemistry teacher and I tentatively asked him "Sir, how come I did so badly?" And he said, "What do you mean badly? You were top of the class." It transpired that the office clerks had not added my Practical marks to the total. It was too late to change it on the Report card however, and Sukumar Verma said, "You; OK, you were tentative, but didn't your parents think that they should kick up a fuss?"

And that day, serendipitously, we came across this Guardian article:

And on the CIE website, I saw that they would refund the fees in the case of a grade improvement.

And Sonati and I decided to indulge in this lottery. Yesterday, the d was revised upwards to a c. Given the adrenaline rush that this "win in the lottery" has brought, we are tempted to ask for yet another re-eval. What would you say?

Double or Quits?