Grave consequences for teachers with bad results


Bilal Iqbal/qaiser Sherazi August 05, 2010

RAWALPINDI: Teachers at public schools whose students showed dismal performance in the Secondary School Certificate (SSC) Annual Examination 2010 are in for a world of pain.

A total of 113,352 students appeared in the 2010 SSC exams conducted by the Board of Intermediate and Secondary Examination (BISE), Rawalpindi. Out of these, 66,558 students managed to clear the exams for a pass percentage of 58.73. This is in contrast to the last year’s results, when 61.67 per cent students appearing in the SSC exams managed to pass.

BISE Rawalpindi Spokesperson Arsalan Cheema told The Express Tribune that teachers and school administrations “were responsible for the dismal performance”. He added: “[The board’s] job is to conduct the tests. We cannot be held responsible for the worse performance this year.”

There are 31 public schools that had a zero percent result in the recently announced SSC results. Not a single student that appeared in the board exams from these schools cleared them. Sources say that jobs of the principals and teachers at these schools will be terminated. Moreover, teachers and principals at schools with less than 10 per cent results will be transferred.

Many of the public schools with dismal performances this year had no more than 10 candidates appearing in the exams. Some even had a single candidate representing them in the exams. Even though these schools have a much larger enrollment of students, they do not forward the registration forms of students that fail their detention exams.

Executive District Education Officer Muhammad Ashraf said that registration forms of students who fail in three or more subjects are not forwarded. Similarly students with less than 60 per cent attendance are not allowed to appear in the SSC exams as regular candidates. However these students, he said, are not stopped from registering as private candidates.

“We offered incentives to teachers with good results. But that has obviously not produced the desired results,” Ashraf said. The Government of Punjab gives a bonus of Rs16000 to teachers that produce 100 per cent results. “The teachers who produced dismal results will be duly persecuted,” he added.

This is not the first time that Government of Punjab has decided to take strict action against the teachers whose students have shown dismal performance in the exams. A similar action was taken last year when teachers who were unable to produce good results were either transferred or dismissed from their posts.

That the percentage of students who passed this year fell, points to the ineffectiveness of the measures taken by the Government of Punjab.

Punjab, at 60.02 per cent, has the highest literacy rate in Pakistan, according to a report released by the Federal Bureau of Statistics in 2008. Sindh is second with 57.7 per cent, Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa third with 49.9 per cent and Balochistan falls in last place with 48.8 per cent.

Published in The Express Tribune, August 6th, 2010.

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