BISE Peshawar: PEN schools want syllabus changed before test

Amina Sardar, PML-N provincial legislator, says government should eliminate the traditional learning system

PESHAWAR: Private school managements falling under the Private Education Network warned that unless the syllabus was improved, they would not allow grade 5 students to appear in Peshawar’s Board of Intermediate and Secondary Education (BISE) examination.

According to BISE Peshawar, as many as 75,000 students were registered from both private and government schools and they will appear for the test scheduled to be held later this month.

A BISE official shared that registration processes in most private and government schools in Peshawar, Charsadda, Chitral, Nowshera, Khyber Agency and Frontier Regions were completed by December 2016.

He said that some private schools owners were expressing reservations on the assessment methodology, but a consensus would be evolved after holding consultations with these owners.

Head of the Private Education Network (PEN) Muhammad Saleem Khan said that they did not have any reservation on assessment tests of grade-5 students, but they had reservations on the curriculum which had been set for these tests.

He blamed Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) for following the guidance of donor agencies for excluding various religious and Pakistan history lessons from textbooks.

“We will never allow our children to studies such books or prepare for tests using these books,” he said.

Amina Sardar, a PML-N provincial legislator, said that the government should eliminate the traditional learning system. She said that students would resort to learning by rote for the test and they will practically gain nothing. She advised the government to take the matter of religion and history seriously and bring some practical improvements in books.

Accusing a particular group of private schools of trying to destroy the province’s educational system, Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa’s Additional Secretary for Elementary and Secondary Education Qaiser Alam said that most private schools had agreed while a few of them were misguiding parents for their own vested interests.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 9^th, 2017.