Fifth, eighth grade exam results leaked

Officials say announcement event will go ahead, blame education ministry

ISLAMABAD: The official results of grade fifth and eighth examinations conducted in government-run schools of the federal capital appeared online on Sunday after the Federal Directorate of Education (FDE) apparently suffered a data breach due to a cyberattack. The results were supposed to have been announced on Monday (today).

Screenshots of the results, complete with the names of position holders were shared in multiple groups and pages on social media sites.

When contacted, FDE Spokesperson Saqib Shahab said that the directorate will press ahead with an official results announcement scheduled for 10am on Monday, April 6.

Asked about the alleged breach of data, the official conceded that some files appeared to have been leaked, adding that their information technology (IT) experts had managed to recover them soon after the leak, apart from safeguarding the full database.

However, sources in FDE claimed that they had prepared the results after taking all the prescribed precautionary measures before handing them over to the IT department for uploading on to the website.

Further, an FDE official claimed that the federal education ministry was responsible for the leak. He said that after compiling the results, they had sent it to the system analyst at the federal education ministry.

The official asserted that the breach allegedly happened when the ministry’s IT department was uploading the results on to its backup server. However, the FDE spokesperson said that they can only say something about the breach once an official fact-finding inquiry is complete.

Meanwhile, the leaked results showed that girls had outshined boys in the fifth-grade exams, bagging the top three positions. These positions were separated by just two marks.

Mishal Fatima from Model College Sector F-7/4 secured the first position in the fifth-grade exams by obtaining 583 marks.

Fatima Ghaffar, a student of Model College Sector G-10/2, fell short of the top spot by two marks, bagging the second position with 581 marks. The third position was secured by Aisha Khan from Model College Sector F-7/4 with 579 marks.

However, boys topped the list for the eighth-grade exam. Its second and third positions were shared by two students each.

Imam Baksh obtained the 682 marks and secured the first position for his school, Ali Trust, in the grade eighth exams. Two students, a boy, and a girl, jointly secured the second position with 676 marks each. The third position was determined with a difference of a single mark, Mahnoor Khursheed and Warisha Batool sharing the spot by obtaining 675 marks each.

Awaiting salary

Hundreds of FDE daily-wage employees and non-teaching staff are still waiting for their salaries for the past four months even though the Islamabad High Court (IHC) had ordered the government to release their dues.

FDE Spokesperson Saqib Shahab said that they had sent a summary, requesting a supplementary grant to issue salaries for such employees. In the meanwhile, he claimed that some Rs10.62 million has been transferred to some 20 educational institutions located in the Bara Kahu area.

Salaries for remaining employees will be released when a supplementary grant is released by the government, he added.

Office-bearers of the Young Teachers Association (YTA) said that the government has not been compensating them for the hard work they put in. On the one hand, the Federal Education Minister Shafqat Mehmood is emphasising that private schools to pay salaries to their staff during the lockdown, but on the other hundreds of employees working at FDE-administered schools are still waiting for their salaries, YTA officials said. They demanded that Prime Minister Imran Khan and the education minister take notice of the situation.

FDE head in trouble

Education Ministry Joint Secretary Umar Javed, who currently serves as the director-general of the FDE, could find himself in trouble as the Supreme Court has in the past sacked the bureaucrats who were given acting charge of the directorate.

An official of the education ministry, who did not wish to be named for fear of repercussions, said that per the FDE rules, either an FDE director can be promoted to the position of DG or the government can opt to appoint the principal of a degree college to the vacant post.

The official added that the appointment of Javed as an acting charge violated the top court’s verdict.

Meanwhile, The Express Tribune has learnt that the federal education ministry has changed the cadre of FDE DG to basic pay scale (BPS) grade 21.

Further, it has amended the rules by forming two new positions of Deputy Director General (DDG) in the FDE. These have been sent to the finance ministry for approval and then onward to the Federal Public Service Commission (FPSC) for final approval.

 

Published in The Express Tribune, April 6^th, 2020.