Students to appear in exams sans having read English book

Students of the educational institutions working under Federal Directorate of Education (FDE) will appear in the first term exams without having a glimpse of the English book.
The FDE has failed to provide all textbooks to the students for the new academic session, which started more than a month ago and students are unable to prepare themselves for the exams. The directorate has announced the schedule of the first term exams of class I-V, commencing from this week while the exams schedule of class VI-VIII will be announced soon. According to the students of FDE-run institutes, they have not received complete textbooks, while the parents feared that their children would not be able to cover th syllabus and prepare for exams. “We do not have English book and our teachers are going to take our exams. Our English teacher is just teaching the grammar due to non-availability of the book,” Fatima, a student of class V said.
“Our teachers will take exam of only grammar (Paper B) but it does look good as we have not read a single lesson of English book”, she said.
A student of class III of IMCG F-10/2, Faiza Shahid said “It will be very difficult for us to cover english syllabus during summer vacation as we haven’t received books till now.” Zahida Mushtaq, mother of two children studying at local college said “It is the responsibility of the FDE to deliver textbooks to the students before commencement of their classes to save their time.
The classes started in April, and the directorate assured to complete the process of distributing the books until the end of the month, she said, adding that it would be difficult for the children to prepare themselves for the first-term exams, she said. According to an FDE official, the National Book Foundation, Punjab Textbook Board and private publishers have handed over the books to the directorate.
Only Oxford Publishers were not ready to hand over the books of English without complete payment, the official said. The Oxford textbooks of English are required for classes IV, V, VII and VIII, the official said.
The publishers are demanding payment of the textbooks, while the finance department had not yet released the amount, he said. An advance payment of Rs 3.5 million had been made before the delivery of textbooks and the remaining amount of Rs 3 million was yet to come, the official said. The FDE provides free books from classes I to X every year to facilitate the students.
AIOU exams to start from today : Allama Iqbal Open University (AIOU) will conduct its final examinations of Matriculation and Postgraduate programmes for the autumn semester 2011 from today (Monday) across the country. Controller of Examinations, AIOU Muhammad Bashir Chaudhry said the university has dispatched the Roll Number slips of Matriculation and Postgraduate programmes to all the enrolled students at their given addresses by Postal Mail Service. He said students who did not receive their Roll Number Slips so far are advised to contact the nearest Regional Office of the University or Deputy Controller of Exams (Result Section), Examinations Department for issuance of Duplicate Roll Number Slip. Students are required to bring two passport size photographs duly attested by the gazetted officer. Roll No. Slip along with Date Sheet has also been placed on AIOU website www.aiou.edu.pk for the convenience of students.