College admission policy

The Sindh government’s new policy on admission to intermediate class has elicited both positive and negative response. The encouraging thing in the policy is that it will help stop college admissions on the basis of fake domicile, as now students will have to submit his or her parent’s domicile papers too. However, the condition to submit primary school certificate might make students and their guardians run around. Given the gap of so many years between primary school and secondary school, most students are unlikely to preserve primary school certificate for so long, and in several cases, primary schools in which they studied might not exist. Under the new admission policy, the production of primary school certificate is mandatory.

Provincial education officials argue that the idea behind new conditions is to get an estimate of the number of students from other provinces seeking admission to colleges in Sindh so that admission quotas for such students can be fixed. Obviously, fixing quotas might take one or several years. As a result, those from outside the province will lose at least one academic year. Studies have already suffered due to the coronavirus pandemic, even though most students have been enabled to pass secondary school examination under a lenient policy. The new admission policy will affect around 1.5 million students. Another condition is aimed at increasing attendance at colleges to prevent the trend of falling student attendance; those remaining absent from college for a week without notice will have their admissions cancelled. This is harsh. It is hoped that this provision will be applied sparingly.

The Sindh education department has increased the number of seats at the intermediate level by 20,000 bringing the total number of seats to 1,40,000 to accommodate new entrants. This occasions a big question mark. There is already a shortage of teachers in Sindh’s colleges and they lack buildings, classrooms, labs, and basic facilities. How will then they accommodate large numbers of students? There are 327 functional colleges in the province.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 7^th, 2021.

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