Exams Debacle: An attempt to spoil future of students

Exams Debacle: An attempt to spoil students’ future

As we already acknowledged there were numerous flaws in our examination system out of which corruption is not an uncommon feature. But the recent exams fiasco at the Intermediate level in Punjab takes the cream of the cake.

After fuming protests by bewildered students and their parents across the province, the Chief Minister Punjab, Mian Shahbaz Sharif has cancelled the Intermediate Part I result released by all eight boards of the province with directives of rechecking all Part I and Part II papers without any fees.

The fee of Rs700 normally charged for such rechecking has been relinquished, as of course it should be, while red-faced officials are trying to find means to explain what happened in this regard.

As things stand for the moment, Punjab Education Minister Shujaur Rehman has blamed the entire fiasco on a computer which had apparently gone quite unwise. It is vital to mention here that it is the first time during which the Intermediate exam system result compilation process had been done through computers.

The first experience has evidently not been a success. Students who had never taken papers of maths were given marks for them, while one candidate was awarded 52 marks for a paper that carried a total of 50 only.

The position-holders in the Part II exam, the results of which were declared in September, already had to be changed after similar grave errors were discovered, presumably as a result of the same computer system.

A human hand lies behind every computer which operates it. The people responsible for the setting up of the system need to be brought before justice. The CM has already ordered an enquiry to reveal the real culprits of the debacle.

Most important of all is to restructure our examination system and reinstate faltering faith in it so that students can be assured of some degree of reliability as they sit for their papers which will decide their futures and the careers they are able to take up. Mismanagement on a larger scale is mean to mess up the lives and careers of millions of young boys and girls.

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Posted by Faisal Farooq on Oct 25 2011. Filed under Pakistan. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry