LAHORE
A large number of students on Thursday strongly protested against, what they termed, wrong marking of their papers in Intermediate Part-I Annual Examination 2016, of which result was announced on October 10.
The protest demonstration caused traffic mess on The Mall and many adjacent roads while the protestors also observed a sit-in outside the Lahore Press Club, strongly criticising the Board of Intermediate and Secondary Education (BISE) authorities for “playing with their future.” The protesters also went to the BISE office where a representative delegation of them held a meeting with the board’s administration.
The students said most of them got quite low marks than they expected on the basis of their performance in the exams. They said the examiners did not do justice with the students and deprived them of their hard work.
A student showing the result of candidate, roll number 74,0657, questioned as to how one could get 100 out of 100 in English? The protesting students alleged that the marking system of BISE, Lahore and other BISEs was full of flaws. They also showed result of a candidate from BISE, Bahawalpur, roll number 529,738, who got 87 marks out of total 85 marks in the subject of chemistry.
The students claimed that candidates in almost all the BISEs were facing similar problems while the authorities were not listening to them. They said the rechecking was merely a recounting of marks which did not benefit the students in the true sense.
The principal of a public college, seeking anonymity, said almost all the BISEs were facing problems vis-à-vis marking of papers. He said there were two issues; professional paper checkers and the environment. According to him, the papers were checked in extreme hot season and the venues used for the same lacked proper facilities. He added because of low remuneration most of the qualified teachers avoided the exercise and only 'seasonal examiners get rid of’ the task.'
The principal said the government should take corrective measures at the earliest since it was directly affecting future of the students.
BISE Lahore public relations officer Qaiser Virk, when contacted, said the part-I result this year, with 59.12 pass percentage, was better than those in previous years. He said the students having objection could apply for rechecking as this was the procedure according to the law to address their grievances.
Qaiser said 135,069 candidates had appeared in the exam from BISE, Lahore and the board had their complete scripts which any aggrieved student could see after formally applying for rechecking for which Oct 25 was the last date. He said the same was told to the delegation of the protesting students. To a question, he said the computer generated mistakes were rectified immediately once noticed.
CM takes notice: Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif has taken notice of the protest of students with regard to the intermediate first year examination result. He directed the Higher Education secretary to thoroughly probe the matter and submit a report.
PEF: The total number of male and female students enrolled in different private schools partnering with the Punjab Education Foundation (PEF) has reached 2.5 million.
These students are enrolled in thousands of partner schools working in all the districts of the province. It has helped the poor and needy students to continue their education through the platform of PEF without any financial burden. PEF Managing Director Tariq Mahmood said this while chairing a weekly coordination meeting at his office on Thursday. The meeting held a detailed review of different PEF-funded programmes for free schooling of children of low income families in the province. The meeting expressed satisfaction that PEF had helped the needy communities by opening the doors of education to their children so that they could grow and excel through this educational opportunity.
