Media ‘threat’ forces principal to give students extra time

A student had to share her question paper with four other girls.

KARACHI:

Kiran, a class IX student of Mama Parsi School, received her objective paper 10 minutes late but the invigilator snatched it away only 20 minutes later.

She was sitting for her Pakistan Studies exam at Jodhpur Memon Association Secondary School, Burns Road, on Tuesday when this incident took place. She knew it was going to be a bad day when her entire batch was seated on the third-floor roof without any fans.

She may have been able to cover for the lost marks on her objective paper if the second paper had arrived on time, but that was not the case. Kiran walked out of the exam ‘roof’ after wasting 12 marks only to find a large group of students complaining to the management.

The argument turned into a fight as parents jumped in the middle and threatened to call the police, or worse, the media. The principal gave in and allowed eight more minutes for the students to finish their exam.

“At the end, when I saw my paper, my handwriting was illegible but thank God I had completed all the answers,” she said. The students at a government school in Gulshan-e-Iqbal Block 6 faced the same conditions. Their centre, set up for 900 candidates, was struggling to accommodate 1,800 frantic students. Rida revealed that she was sharing her question paper with four other girls since the administration did not have enough.

Board of Secondary Education Karachi controller Anwar Ahmed Zai explained that the delivery boy, who was supposed to take the question papers, had an accident and was unable to get the question papers to them on time.

A parent, Obaid, told The Express Tribune that the invigilators were not very cooperative either. They are refusing to give supplementary copies. “When my daughter asked for an extra sheet, the invigilator refused and asked her what she should do by writing so much,” he said.

For her part, principal Mubina Butt denied that any such thing happened and assured that her staff members were very well-mannered.

According to Ahmed Zai, the board has appointed a Central Control Officer to head all 225 examination centres in order to control disorganisation and cheating. He said that he has been visiting different centres to check the arrangements and has arrested 202 copy cases so far.

The names of the students have been changed to protect their identities

Published in The Express Tribune, April 20^th,  2011.