Students suffering due to lacunas in PEC examination system

All Punjab Teachers Union blames examination system for class 5 & 8 affecting students; threatens protest if system is not abolished; EDO admits problems exist in the PEC system but the demand of abolishing it altogether is totally uncalled for
Saeed Ahmed
Rawalpindi
Students of grades five and eight studying in government educational institutions are suffering due to discrepancies in the examination system conducted by the Punjab Education Commission.
Credible sources in educational institutions and related with education departments, while criticising the examination system, told ‘The News’ that every year over 2.4 million students from all over Punjab province who appear in the examinations face problems.
Sources termed the system poor as under it competent and intelligent students are failed while students who are weak in studies and not sure enough to clear the examination are being declared successful every year. As a result, the students who are hopeful to clear the examination after being failed by the PEC suffer a lot as their one year is lost.
Similarly, according to allegations levelled by sources, the students who attend their classes regularly are declared absent from their institutions and the absent students are shown to have full attendance.
The teachers and headmasters of different educational institutions of Punjab, when approached for getting their views, while requesting not to be named defended the allegations levelled by sources. According to them, since the enforcement of the PEC, students of classes 5 and 8 suffer a lot every year. They said that the Punjab chief minister, education secretary and other authorities should give serious thinking about abolishing this system as it is not suitable.
Besides the teachers and principals and the representatives of All Punjab Teachers Union including its president Saghir Aalam who is also chief patron of Headmasters Association besides Shafiq Bhalwalia, president of Punjab SES Teachers Association endorsed the allegations against the examination system run by the PEC, as it affects thousands of students.
They urged the Punjab government to abolish PEC in the best interest of students, failing which they have decided to launch a protest movement all over Punjab in the first week of April.
Giving details of the strategy to be adopted against the PEC, Saghir Aalam and Shafiq Bhalwalia stated that the first phase of protest movement would kick off from Gujar Khan in April to be followed by Kalar Syedan, Rawalpindi, Lahore, Jhelum and Taxila.
“Under the protest campaign, the representatives of the associations would visit every school of Punjab and hold protest meetings with the headmasters and teachers during which they would be apprised of the poor system of PEC which needs to be abolished. We would create awareness among the teachers about the lacunas prevailing in PEC, which are affecting the students,” said Saghir Aalam.
If the government fails to abolish the PEC, then in the second phase, protest demonstrations would be held in all parts of the province classes will be boycotted. The campaign would continue till the abolition of PEC from schools, Shafiq Bhalwalia declared.
On the other hand, EDO Education (Rawalpindi district) Qazi Zahoor ul Haq, while reacting to the report, admitted that problems exist in the examination system of PEC but the demand of abolishing it totally is uncalled for. “Rather, improvements could be made in the system through effective and practical measures,” he added.
He did not agree to the claims that under the system those students who fail to clear the examination are declared pass and those who pass are declared unsuccessful. He made it clear that the confusion arises only when some students mention their roll numbers wrongly. “Otherwise the bright students cannot be declared fail and those who fail cannot be declared pass,” he said adding on the complaints of parents when the papers of children are checked many a time it was found that they had mentioned wrong roll numbers in their papers.
At the same time, he agreed that only the conduct of examinations of class 5 and class 8 should be separated under the system.
The EDO, while rejecting another claim, said that how could it be possible to declare absent student as present. Only because of confusion, this kind of situation prevails sometimes which is settled later.
To a question, he said that certain lacunas prevail in the system which could be amended through improvements. “Abolishing the entire system is not a right demand,” he clarified.