Punjab education board website down, students anxious

With deadline of intermediate exams nearing, board scrambles to fix error.

RAWALPINDI: The website of Punjab education board has gone down right at the brink of the deadline of intermediate admissions, putting the data of 0.8 million students at the risk of being lost.

The Punjab government had made it mandatory for matriculation and intermediate students to submit their admission forms online, ending the manual submission method.

The change affected all eight education boards of Punjab, which include Rawalpindi, Lahore, Multan, Faisalabad, Dera Ghazi khan, Sargodha, Bahawalpur and Gujranwala.

Students’ date sheets and roll numbers were also to be given out through the new online system.

But the website is now non-functional because of a possible virus, putting the registration information of all the students in danger of being gone.

The deadline for intermediate admissions is February 19, but not a single form has been submitted online for the past three days due to the error. The IT staff is scrambling to fix the problem, but said they would need one more week.

Chairpersons of all boards have announced that intermediate students should submit their admission forms manually. Moreover, the vacations of the education department employees have been postponed till March 5.

The employees rejected the cancellation of holidays and manual submission of forms, demanding an official notification rather than oral directives.

Meanwhile, President All Pakistan Private School Management Association Ibrar Ahmed Khan said, “We had already opposed the online system, and now switching to the manual method at the last minute is jeopardising the future of students.”

Published in The Express Tribune, February 18^th, 2011.