How the Sindh education board can benefit from blockchain

Blockchain technology has always been a fascinating concept to me. The common understanding about this technology is that it comprises cryptocurrencies, non-fungible and fungible tokens, which come under the umbrella of a broader term called web3. The truth is that it is a phenomenon that goes beyond NFTs and cryptocurrencies, and it is sad that it remains largely misunderstood and criminally underutilised.

The technology has sundry use cases, including but not limited to the supply chain industry, energy and sustainability, finance, trade and e-commerce, the public sector, etc. The key features that allow blockchain to penetrate these different sectors and industries are immutability, ledger technology, consensus mechanism, and decentralisation. What these features do is that they further optimise the working of a sector or industry by enhancing its security, strengthening record-keeping, increasing transparency, and preventing risks and damages.

The use of blockchain is seen in education management as well. As mentioned, record-keeping is one of the primary features of this technology that industries also leverage. Record-keeping is done via blocks that store data available to the public through an immutable public ledger, keeping data integrity intact.

Agree or disagree, there is a need for reliability and data integrity in the education sector, especially in the context of Pakistan's Sindh Board. In 2023, nearly 0.7 million students appeared in matric exams from the Sindh Board, which is a significant number. The exam sheets of these students are checked and recorded manually. However, it's reported that every year, hundreds of instances of cheating are found. Cases of exam papers leaking the night before the exam day and tally errors are also abundant.

Moreover, unethical monetary practices lead to manipulation of students' scores and percentages. In fact, in December 2022, when the results of the intermediate board exams were revealed, nearly all the students from 38 different colleges in Karachi had failed. The blame for such performance was put on the schools' management.

Practically, it does not sound believable. It is true that the quality of education is not at par, but the Sindh Board requires a minimum of 33% to pass. That is how low the threshold is. What's more is that among these 38 colleges, a good number of institutes were private. Thus, it is hard to accept that everyone from these colleges failed their exams. Here, it is important to note that there have also been instances of students needing to be fairly graded. Rechecking and scrutiny can be taxing and costly, especially when your future depends on your board exams.

Furthermore, acquiring the relevant certificates and transcripts is also not a swift process since the system is still highly reliant on paper. This further adds to the cost because Pakistan does not produce paper, it imports it. If only the record-keeping mechanism of the Sindh Board had full transparency.

It shows that a number of major problems faced by the Sindh Board have to do with data and record-keeping along with management. While the latter can only be solved by strong leadership and vision, the former can be addressed by blockchain technology to an extent. The way things are in the Sindh Board is majorly problematic because of the lack of trust in the system. Blockchain technology can revive and improve the overall trust factor.

Across the border, the CBSE Board of India has already adopted blockchain technology in its education sector. In September 2021, the board collaborated with the Centre of Excellence for Blockchain Technology of the National Informatics Centre under the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology to create a software called Academic BlockChain Documents (ABCD). This software saves paper, records certificates in a linked chain structure, and helps verify and authorise students' certificates. In addition, budding web3 ed-tech companies like Metaschool are also leveraging the technology to keep a tab on NFT (certificates of the virtual world) distribution on course completions.

Research published in Egyptian Informatics Journal by Sura I. et al. (2022) found that traditional education systems encounter problems because of locally hosted databases and a single cloud provider. This weakens the fault tolerance mechanism of data-keeping. The research proposes three models that can be used in educational institutes. These are essentially blockchain-based management systems that leverage consensus mechanisms and the node structure in the blockchain ecosystem.

Lastly, it may be argued that the problems faced by the Sindh Board examinations are more structural in nature. It may also be argued that integrating new technology into management is elusive and that there are more pressing issues to deal with. While all of that is true, none of what is mentioned above should serve as a reason to avoid welcoming technology. No problem gets solved overnight, but the repair work must start somewhere for the problem at hand to be solved someday. It is high time the Pakistan Blockchain Institute (PBI) steps up and collaborates with different boards, helping them synthesise, protect and manage the data in a fool-proof and immutable way.