HEC holds workshops on degree attestation, equivalence problems

Islamabad
To aware controllers of examination about degree attestation and equivalence problems faced by Higher Education Commission (HEC) and students, the HEC organised three workshops all over the country.
As many as 142 controllers of examination from all over Pakistan and Azad Kashmir attended these workshops titled ‘Way Forward to Address Challenges and Issues faced by HEC while Attesting-Equating Educational Credentials of Pakistani institutions in 21st Century’ to discuss ways for further strengthening the process of degree attestation, standard of examination and award of degrees to the students.
The workshops were held at Islamabad, Karachi, Lahore, Peshawar while participants from Balochistan attended the session in Karachi.
Director General (Accreditation Attestation) HEC Farman Ullah Anjum was the resource person for all these workshops. The main objective was to aware Controllers of Examination about degree attestation and equivalence problems faced by the primary stakeholder of HEC, as well as the Institutions.
The final session was held at Allama Iqbal Open University (AIOU), Islamabad comprising 32 eminent controllers of examinations of all federal universities along with AJK HEIs. Speaking to the audience, Chairman HEC Dr. Mukhtar Ahmed, urged the Controllers to actively participate in finalizing the criteria requirements and key essential features for any qualitative transcript to be taken at par with the international standards. He asked participants to make processes easier for students by getting themselves synchronized with HEC mechanisms and procedure.
Vice Chancellor, AIOU Dr. Shahid Siddiqui also addressed to the participants and thanked HEC for taking this initiative. Farman Ullah Anjum discussed different issues related to transcript samples, degree aspects and attestation criteria. Dr. Iftikhar Ahmed provided his input in issues regarding standardization of grades, MS/MPhil policies, uniform grading systems, quality assurance criteria and GAT issues.
The first workshop was held in Karachi in which 52 controllers as well as deputy controllers of examination participated from public and private higher education institutions (HEIs) of Sindh and Balochistan. The second session was held for Punjab’s Controllers in Lahore in which over 30 HEIs participated. Different issues like duplicate/revised degrees, re-verification and re-attestation, lack of proper coordination and dissemination of information to the controllers, etc were discussed.
Many Controllers raised points on MS/MPhil criteria of HEC which were adequately addressed by Dr. Muhammad Rafiq Baloch, Director General (Quality Assurance Agency) HEC. Many issues were resolved via face to face interaction as well as attestation and equivalence mechanism of HEC was shared with the participants in order to spread this information to the passing out graduates. HEIs agreed to cooperate with HEC in various aspects like provision of gazettes, acting as HEC coordinator in their Universities and to keep their transcripts updated with the HEC semester guidelines.
Similarly, the third session in Peshawar was attended by controllers of examinations. Executive Director HEC Dr. Mansoor Akbar Kundi presided over the workshop and stressed on the participants to share their experiences and work in coordination with HEC to streamline the whole system of examination and award of degrees. Around 30 HEIs attended the workshop.
Adviser (Quality Assurance) HEC Dr. Iftikhar Ahmed Khan elaborated different issues regarding credit hours transfer and exemption, GAT issues and related complications. The KPK Controllers showed commitment towards following HEC prescribed guidelines in future too.
All these sessions provided an interactive forum to HEC and controllers of examination to discuss various issues and come up with solutions for benefitting different stakeholders in general and students in particular.