Class 8 exams reintroduced after seven years

PECTAA will conduct first-ever digitally marked tests from second week of March

RAWALPINDI:

Board examinations for Class 8 in government schools across Punjab, organised by the Punjab Education, Curriculum, Training and Assessment Authority (PECTAA), will begin in the second week of March.

For the first time, scripts will be marked through a computerised system, and results will be announced on March 31.

The examinations will run for only two to three days and will cover four subjects: Urdu, English, Mathematics and Social Studies. The Punjab government has released Rs1.6 billion for the conduct of the exams.

PECTA has issued standard operating procedures for examination staff: school heads will serve as resident inspectors, senior schoolteachers as superintendents, and primary and elementary teachers as test administrators.

Staff for each examination centre will be selected through an online system. Papers in the remaining subjects will be conducted internally by schools.

The earlier experiment with Class 8 board examinations had failed. The exams were previously administered by the Punjab Examination Commission, but the system was scrapped five years after its failure and the commission was dissolved.

After a seven-year hiatus, the Class 8 board examinations are being reinstated, this time under PECTA rather than the Punjab Examination Commission.