‘All secondary board exam centres to have CCTVs’

To curb students from cheating, the Sindh Education and Literacy Department decided to install CCTV cameras in all places to serve as examination centres for the various secondary boards. 

The decision was taken by provincial minister, Jam Mehtab Hussain Dahar, at a meeting of the department’s steering committee held on Wednesday.

Secretary education, schools, Jamal Mustafa Syed, secretary education, colleges, Dr Riaz Ahmed Memon, chairmen of all Sindh’s secondary boards attended the meeting.

Although, further details were not discussed in the meeting, Dahar directed officers to carry out intense measures to eradicate cheating culture. He urged all stakeholders to work at the same pace to achieve the objective. Strict action against students, invigilators as well as externals caught cheating or facilitating the illegal practice would be dealt with sternly, the meeting had further decided.

It will be for the first time that such a technology would be used by a government education department, since only a handful of private schools in Karachi had so far made use of it, The News has learnt.

Dates for academic sessions were also discussed in the meeting. All public schools were decided to have their academic session start on April 1, while Cambridge, O’ and A-Level systems were scheduled to begin their session from August 1.

Classes in colleges were scheduled to begin from August 1, while academic session in schools managed by the Agha Khan Board was directed to commence from May 1.

Examinations for classes I to VIII were decided to be held before March 15, whereas all secondary examination boards were told to declare matriculation results before July 31.

The annual summer break was decided to commence from June 1 to July 31, while winter vacations would be held as per the previous schedule.

According to the steering committee on education, annual exams of secondary classes (Class-IX and X) would be held from March 28, whereas annual exams for higher secondary classes would commence from April 28.

All private and public institutions were to hold sporting and extra-curricular activities for at least a week. Annual gazetted holidays were also finalised.

Participants of the meeting were also told that from December 21, 2016 as many as 306 closed schools in Larkana, 404 in Sukkur, 183 in Shaheed Benazirabad, 155 in Hyderabad, 394 in Mirpurkhas and 25 in Karachi were made functional.