KARACHI – Hundreds of students stormed the Board of Secondary Education Karachi (BSEK) office on Saturday in a bid to submit their examination forms for the annual matriculation examination 2011.
On Friday, Governor Sindh Dr Ishratul Ebad – the controlling authority of examination boards in Sindh – had said that the students who failed to submit exam forms within the deadline will have no choice but to appear in the supplementary examinations.
Following the governor’s directives, the BSEK officials did not entertain the students and asked them to return to their homes. However, some of the students misbehaved with the officials including BSEK Exanimation Controller Ameenuddin.
With only two days remaining before the start of Secondary School Certificate Part-I and II (science and general groups) Annual Examinations 2011, the students rushed to the BSEK to coerce the authority into submitting their exam forms and issuing admit cards.
On failure to do so, they tried to forcefully enter into the offices of the sections concerned.
Meanwhile, BSEK Secretary Hoor Mazhar sought the help of police and Rangers personnel to handle the situation and the law enforcers took the charge inside the premises of the board office, patrolling the area to avoid any untoward situation.
Among those wanting to submit exam forms, many students had arrived at the BSEK in search of their admit cards that have not been delivered due to unknown reasons.
According to the BSEK, the admit cards were not issued owing to some objections and directed the students to submit documents for verification.
Several other students coming to the BSEK on Saturday had misplaced their admit cards and wanted duplicate cards to be issued. Another category of students belonged to those wanting to shift their examination centres and another set of students had their roll numbers missing from examination centres’ lists.
Talking to Pakistan Today, acting BSEK Chairman Anwar Ahmed Zai said an ‘overseeing team’ (OT) has been constituted, comprising representatives of private schools and officers of the BSEK and the Education Department, which would visit examination centres and submit their reports at the board office.
The OT would check for any unfair practices being reported during the papers and monitor if facilities like water, electricity, proper furniture and other logistics were available to the candidates or not, said Zai, adding that the OT would visit at least three examination centres every day and would not visit the same centre more than twice during the whole examination process. He added that each member of the OT would be given a performa to be filled and countersigned by the examination centres’ superintendents.
The BSEK acting chairman said that around 311,000 candidates would appear in the Class IX and X papers of science and general groups including regular and private students.
Zai said the BSEK has assigned one centre coordinator officer (CCO) to each of the 225 examination centres, for delivering the exam papers to the centre. These papers would be sealed in an envelope, which would be opened by the centre superintendent only, he added.
Then the CCO would collect the answer transcripts and return to the BSEK for depositing them with to section concerned, he said.
The stand-in officer said that in case a student changes his examination centre without BSEK’s permission, not only the student but centre superintendents and section officers concerned would also get punishments as per law.
Zai said that it has been decided that those students, who had received objections from the BSEK, should submit relevant documents within the due time limit, but if they fail to do so, their results would be withheld. The students would be given a specific timeframe for clearing their cases, otherwise, their results would be cancelled permanently, he added.
