Evaluation and reporting: Matric results delayed

A board chairman says results are likely to be announced by all eight boards within a week.

LAHORE:

Nearly a million students who sat their matriculation exams in the province this year will have to wait for the results, earlier scheduled to be announced today (July 21).

A member of the Inter-Boards Committee of Chairmen told The Express Tribune all eight boards would announce the results on the same day within a week.

Lahore Board of Intermediate and Secondary Education (BISE) Public Relations Officer Qaiser Virk said the delay was caused by glitches in the computers. He said he could not announce a new date.

Dr Majid Naeem, the information technology consultant who looks after the IT support, rejected the suggestion that the fault lay with the system. He said before letting the boards register candidates for the exams he had ensured that the software was working properly. “The registration was carried out with the same software without any trouble,” he said.

A meeting between officials from all eight boards was held at the Higher Education Department on Wednesday. Sources in the department said the education secretary had directed the officials to ensure that results were announced within a week. They said officials responsible for online support were reprimanded in the meeting.

A BISE Lahore official told the Tribune that results of at least 14,000 students had yet to be reported to the system. He said the gazette could not be published until these results were recorded.

Results for at least 10,000 results were yet to be recorded at Rawalpindi board, said an official in the office of the Examinations Controller. He said it would take officials at least a week to compile the results.

“We’re working on results without a break for three days now,” he said. He said last year there were at least 200 mistakes in result cards because of some flaws in the software. “We enter marks against a certain registration number but the system assigns it to another number,” he said.

Students and their parents expressed concern over postponement of results. Khurshid Ahmed, whose son sat his exams this year in Lahore, said the boards should have announced a date keeping in view their capabilities. He said July 21 was the second date announced by the board. Earlier, the results were scheduled to be announced on July 15, he said.

Published in The Express Tribune, July 21^st, 2011.