Education boards raise fee to overcome financial woes

Students condemn sharp increase in examination, registration fee

RAWALPINDI:

In order to tackle the ongoing severe financial crisis and to increase their income, the boards of intermediate and secondary education have added various charges to the examination registration fees for annual matriculation examinations.

Sources said on the one hand the inclusion of development charges, sports charges, scholarship charges and original certificates charges will increase the income of the education boards by millions of rupees while on the other hand, this will exacerbate the problems of the students belonging to the impoverished households.

Each board conducts four annual examinations in a year (IX, X, XI, XII) and four second annual (supplementary) examinations with about 100,000 to 250,000 students participating in each exam.

The students strongly condemned these charges and demanded to make the matriculation examinations free for the promotion of education.

With the increase in new charges, each student of the private science group will have to pay a total of Rs4,640, the private arts group Rs3,560, the regular science group Rs3,560 and every student of the regular arts group will have to pay Rs3,440.

Now all the students will have to submit scholarship charges of Rs80, development charges of Rs200, sports charges of Rs100 and original certificates charges of Rs700 in the examination registration fees.

The regular schedule for submission of admission forms has also been issued according to which the annual matriculation examinations across Punjab will start from April 1, 2023. The last date for submitting the admission form along with the single admission fee is January 18.

The receiving of examination registration forms has started from December 20. The last date for submission of the registration form with a double fee is fixed from January 19 to January 30 and for submission of the registration form with the triple fee is fixed from January 31 to February 7.

According to Chairman All Boards Committee, no admission form will be received after February 7, 2023. The students who failed in the recent class IX and X second annual (supplementary) exams will also be able to participate in these exams.

A special counter has been set up in Rawalpindi Education Board for receiving examination registration forms.

 

Published in The Express Tribune, December 23^rd, 2022.