BSEK mulls revoking affiliation of 10 schools

Karachi
The Board of Secondary Education Karachi (BSEK) has decided to cancel the affiliations of around 10 schools with immediate effect for failing to provide results of practical exams to the examination board in time, said its chairman Anwar Ahmed Zai on Wednesday.
The decision will be finalised after a meeting of the board of governors, which is to called as soon as possible.
He said because the results were not submitted in time, the board ended up declaring 800 students absent in the practical exams. The BSEK came to know later that the results and attendance were not shared with the board.
Zai said the BSEK controller of examination Noman Ahsan had been directed to provide immediate ‘relief’ to the affected students.
He said though permission from the board of governors is required in this case, I have requested the examination controller to assist the students. In the mean time, a meeting of the board of governors will be called as soon as possible.
Zai said the affiliation of these schools was not immediately cancelled since the students who enrolled in class nine will also appear in matric exams. “The BSEK will not drop the issue and final decision will be taken against these schools once their students appear in part I and II of the board exams,” he said.

‘Failed’ students
Meanwhile, the BSEK chairman, a press conference on Wednesday gave parents of failed students an open invitation to come and check the answer booklets of their children.
“If the parents believe their child should have cleared the matric exams but were deliberately failed by the board office, they should come and see the answer sheets,” said Zai. “Though we are no legally bound to do so, I am giving an open invitation to all those who claim that the BSEK has not done justice to students.”
He said the students who have been protesting since Monday have been claiming that they were deliberately marked absent or failed in the results announced for science and general groups.
To deal with the matter, he said, the BSEK had set up special counters to reply these two major complaints. “We are providing subject-wise marks to the protestors and also showing their answer copies to parents and elders coming with the protesting children,” said the BSEK chairman.
The protesters claim that brilliants students were declared fail or were marked absent while many a parents claimed that their child had secured more than 80 percent marks in class nine or SSE part I exams last year, but this year they were declared fail by the board.
However, responding to the allegations, Zai said the board’s examiners only awarded marks if the student had given the correct answers. “If there is nothing in the answer script then how can a student get marks,” he said.
“By judging the numbers of copies, I feared that previous marks were not transparent. I do not know how the students bagged those colouring marks in previous annual exams since I was not the BSEK chairman at that time. But this time, I can assure anyone that so far I have not found a single genuine candidate who was mistakenly or deliberately declared fail by the board.”
He said most of the answer copies were being rechecked in the presence of parents by board examiners in his presence, and nothing was found in them to award marks. He claimed that hardly any of the students who obtained more than 80 percent marks last year scored more than 20 when they copes were rechecked.
“I also questioned some of the candidates but they could not reply properly,” he said. “In case, any student was mistakenly or deliberately marked absent, his case will be cleared. Senior officials and I am seeing the matter.”
Sharing his experience with a student, Zai said he found a girl student leading the protest outside the board office by raising a hue and cry and loudly cursing the controller examinations.
“I called her into my office and asked the section concerned to bring her answer booklet. The examiners and head examiners checked her copy again after which I examined it too before showing it to her mother. Instead of answering questions, the candidate had written a request to the copy checker to award her 90 percent marks in the subject, saying that she was a Hafiz-e-Quran and she had scored more than 80 percent marks last year.”
He also showed the answer booklet to the media during his press conference. He said if the board declared failed students “pass” then it would be unfair to merit and hundreds of other students who studied hard all year round and deserved their high marks.

Employees warned
Zai said he had asked the BSEK staff, including the computer department, to come forward themselves if they had made a mistake or deliberately made changes in the results, or were involved in it in any other way.
He warned that if any of the board employees were found to be involved in malpractice during preparations of the result, its announcement and or after that, he or she would face severe departmental action.
The BSEK has not yet issued mark sheets of students. At present, it is busy in rectifying students’ problems. However, Zai claimed that so far no result was changed and not a single person who had challenging the BSEK was proved correct.
He said in the previous year, the board office had received more than 4,000 scrutiny forms out of hardly a few hundred were genuine cases. He said this year the board had received 850 forms and they will be dealt with within a working week.
Only on Monday, he said, the BSEK received about 344 scrutiny forms but only found difference of six to 10 marks in four answers booklets. However, even after those minor changes, the students still could not get enough marks to pass the exams.