Foreign boards becoming popular due to deteriorating standards of our education system

British and European examination boards have been cashing in on Pakistan’s broken education system, with over 200,000 students now enrolled in foreign programmes.

As local examination boards and schools struggle to perform, international institutions like Cambridge International, Pearson, Learning Resource Network (LRN) and International Baccalaureate are swooping in.

Recently, Oxford AQA was also granted a no-objection certificate (NOC) by the Inter-Boards Chairman Coordination Commission (IBCC), allowing them to operate in Pakistan alongside two other British boards, NCUK and QUALIFI.

Meanwhile, local private boards like the Aga Khan University Examination Board and Ziauddin University Examination Board have barely made a dent, with student enrolments under 100,000.

In stark contrast, the 34 public education boards in Pakistan, including eight in the province of Sindh, serve over 6 million students annually.

IBCC Secretary Prof Ghulam Ali Mallah told The News that foreign boards were allowed to function in Pakistan to make it easier for Pakistani students who intend to go abroad to get admission to British and European universities.

He said Pakistan accepted many foreign boards but they did not recognise the matriculation and Intermediate certificates of our boards, due to which students of our boards had to study further to get admission to the British universities.

He said efforts were being made to improve the examination system of our boards next year, and in place of marks, a grading system was being introduced. The IBCC secretary further stated that if our boards were recognised abroad, the enrolment of students on foreign boards in Pakistan may decrease significantly.