Organised mafia active during matric exams

Question paper leaks half an hour before the exam time

KARACHI:

An organised mafia that facilitates students in cheating during exams is active in the city in a novel way, damaging the reputation of education boards. There are reports that five out of 505 examination centres are involved in cheating.

Talking to The Express Tribune, Chairman Matric Board Sharaf Ali Shah held the center superintendents responsible for this malpractice. He mentioned that question papers are delivered to distant centres about 40 to 45 minutes before the exam time and 25 minutes before the paper starts at the nearby centres. At 19 centres, question papers were distributed 40 minutes before the exam time and the question papers went viral 25 minutes before the start of the paper, the chairman said, adding, after delivery of the question paper, centre superintendents and invigilators are responsible to take care of the question papers. The board is not responsible if any malpractice happens.

In order to prevent cheating practice, we have instructed our teams to visit examination centres. We have now decided to send external teams to each examination center to ensure that transparency is maintained. The PTA has been requested to install jammers at the examination centres during the papers or suspend the internet service.

In Karachi, the tenth-grade examination paper widely circulated on social media before the exam time. According to the center superintendent, students enter the center after seeing the solved question paper due to paper leak. The chairman called for the deployment of police officers outside every centre to prevent cheating.

On the eighth day of the secondary education board exams, the biology paper for the tenth grade reached WhatsApp groups before the exam. Taking full advantage of this, students benefitted by reviewing the solved paper outside the centre.

The center superintendent at the Government Boys Secondary School in Sachal Goth, while talking to The Express Tribune, said that parents are also involved in facilitating their children in cheating. The time of the paper is 9.30am, but the students enter the centre one hour late after seeing the answers.

On the other hand, intelligent students staged a protest, stating that they solve the paper through hard work, whereas some students will get good grades by paying money. Either we also become part of this cheating or the government should adopt a systematic approach to prevent copying.

However, a centre superintendent accused the board employees or other people of carrying out malpractice. He said, we get the paper 30 minutes before the exam time, which we deliver to the students in 15 minutes. The board or other people may be involved in leaking the paper, he said.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 16^th, 2024.