Following persistent delays, the Lahore Board of Intermediate and Secondary Education (BISE) has finally decided to announce the intermediate part-1 result on October 17 at 10am. Students fear they would not get sufficient time to prepare for the supplementary exams, if the board makes mistakes in the result formation, again.
Earlier, BISE was caught napping when thousands of students of class nine students rushed to the BISE office to get their papers rechecked.
All eight boards of Punjab have been announcing the intermediate part-1 result in September for the past several years: while the Intermediate part-1 result was announced on September 25 last year, this year the result was first expected on October 5, and then delayed to October 8. More than 130,000 students have been waiting for the result, whereas students who wanted to seek scholarships on the basis of their first year’s result were disappointed and frustrated due to the delay.
With the introduction of the online system, glaring errors in the results have become a routine: the part-1 exams ended on June 8 this year, and students have been waiting for the result for over four months. Although the inter students have been allowed to appear in the supplementary exams with the second year exams next year, students question the wisdom of this decision and wonder how they would be able to complete the course of two years within a few months.
The online system was identified as the root cause for the mess created by BISE, as such negligence by the board had not been witnessed before. Lahore Board Public Relations Officer (PRO) Qaiser said meetings for the announcement of the final result date were underway and the result would be announced on October 17. Meanwhile, the Lahore board has been operating without a chairman, even in the time of such crises. Since the termination of Muhamad Akram Kashmiri tenure on September 16, BISE Secretary Mushtaq Tahir has been the acting chairman. Controller Examinations Eijaz Hussain Naqvi said the class nine students’ problems had been solved and things would improve with the passage of time.
Punjab Teachers Union (PTU) President Rana Liaquat lashed out at the ineptness of BISE and said top board officials were involved in corruption, adding that the board had undone all progress and reforms made by Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif in his last tenure. He said all departments of the Punjab Government were involved in the anti-dengue campaign and their focus had diverted from other issues, including the blunders of the educational board.
Students said they had been anxiously waiting for the result from the past several months and this unprecedented delay in announcement might have a dreadful impact on their futures. A student, Meerab Mansha, said the board was responsible for the blunders and should put its house in order to save the students’ future.