The ongoing protests flared up on Saturday when students in Gujranwala burnt the record room at the Board of Intermediate and Secondary Education (BISE) office while their counterparts in Lahore gathered outside the BISE Lahore office and shouted slogans against the government and board officials.
The demonstrations prompted the provincial education minister, Mian Mujtaba Shujaur Rehman, to negotiate with the protesting students in Lahore and announce the cancellation of Intermediate Part 1 results from the Lahore, Gujranwala, Faisalabad and Multan boards.
“I promise that results will be compiled again and announced within two months with all mistakes removed,” Rehman said, in an effort to appease the charged students.
The minister also announced that students who received between 600 and 900 marks could have their papers rechecked without paying any additional fee. The students who have paid the fee for rechecking the exams would be refunded, he added.
Meanwhile, Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Shairf also called for a judicial inquiry against those responsible for the mismanagement.
The online system
The students’ main grievance was the new online system, allegedly the culprit behind discrepancies in their results.
“The online system doesn’t mark the papers. It just calculates the numbers,” said BISE Lahore’s information technology consultant Dr Majid Naeem while speaking to The Express Tribune.
“If there are any mistakes in checking, they are on the part of the teachers, not the online system,” he said, adding that some elements in the education boards were opposed to the system, which had shut down avenues of bribery for them.
While the provincial education minister admitted to flaws in the online system, he vowed to continue with it.
“We have introduced [the system] in all boards of the province to end students’ direct contact with board officials,” he said. “This is the best way to end corruption and maintain secrecy.”
“Some of our staffers were not trained and due to mistakes of some board officials this system hasn’t worked this time,” he said, adding that they are consulting experts and a report on the system’s failure would be presented to the chief minister within a week.
‘Politicised protests’
The sentiment was echoed by a senior faculty member at Government Islamia College, Civil Lines who maintained that the online system was “excellent” and the protests were politicised.
“A group in all boards is opposing the online system, while an education-related tycoon has been motivating students in his institutions to protest against the Punjab government,” the professor said.
Board officials in Multan, on condition of anonymity, said the percentage of errors in the four boards combined is less than 1% of all students who took their exams, and does not merit the protests witnessed on Saturday. The officials added that protests in Multan, Dera Ghazi Khan, Bahawalpur and Rahim Yar Khan were mostly led by student unions of the ruling party, allegedly in response to protests against electricity load-shedding that were held by the main opposition party, the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz.
Published in The Express Tribune, October 23rd, 2011.
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