Politicising medical education

Undue interference in medical education would only harm cause of the important and sensitive profession of medicine

Getting carried away by emotions may or may not work well in politics, but an emotional approach in important matters like education proves harmful to students. If this had not been the case, students, especially after long vacations, would not be seen creeping, like a snail, to school. Protests have been held against the recent entrance test for admission to medical and dental colleges on the alleged grounds that test papers contained out-of- syllabus questions and consequently a large number of candidates from Sindh failed the test. Sometimes there are complaints about exam questions being above the standard of a certain level. However, when politics driven by emotions is introduced into such controversy, things need to be cleared by hard facts. An analytical report carried in this newspaper confirms the sad state of education in the country. Some of the hard facts are as follows:

A total of 25,266 candidates from Sindh province appeared in the test. Only 25.9% students from rural Sindh cleared the test while the pass percentage for urban Sindh stands at 43.61%. More than 16,965 failed the test with less than 120 marks. Compared to this, 74.4% students from Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa passed the test. In the province, a total of 32,658 candidates took the test. Out of the 200 marks, four of them secured more than 190 marks while as many as 31 scored between 186 and 190. Balochistan too fared better than Sindh. A total of 5,981 candidates from the province took the test and 32.48% cleared it. In G-B, 71.1% students passed the test.

Following protests over the admission test results, the Sindh health minister too expressed doubts about the results. Education experts from the province, however, attribute the unsatisfactory performance by candidates from Sindh to our sticking to an outdated curriculum for years and years, while other provinces have regularly been updating their courses of study. A realistic approach is needed. Undue interference in medical education would only harm the cause of the important and sensitive profession of medicine. This is elementary, would-be doctors!

Published in The Express Tribune, December 30^th, 2020.

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