Medical education: PMDC to defend college admission test today

Petitioners say test depriving those who cannot afford private tuitions of a medical education.

LAHORE:

The counsel for Pakistan Medical and Dental Council (PMDC) will on Thursday (today) argue before a Lahore High Court division bench in defence of the entry test requirement for admission to medical colleges in the province.

The bench headed by Justice Shahid Saeed on Wednesday accepted for hearing a petition challenging the entry test requirement. Petitioners Muhammad Zubair, Maqsood Ahmed Qureshi, Dr Shagufta Mubeen, Ms Robina Iqbal, Javaid Iqbal, Muhammad Khurshid and Samra Sagheer submitted through their counsel Muhammad Azhar Siddique that ensuring equal opportunity for education was a constitutional responsibility of the government. They said the entry test requirement was discriminatory. They said thousands of deserving students could not get decent marks because they lacked resources to pay for private tuition for the test in addition to paying for high school. The test was depriving these students of a medical education.

Siddique said the University of Engineering and Technology (UET), another professional education institute, prepared its merit list by giving 70 per cent weight to applicants’ intermediate marks and 30 per cent to their entry test marks.

He said the University of Health Sciences had earlier followed the same ratio in determining its merit list, however, it had now increased the weight of entry test marks to 50 per cent and decreased that of intermediate marks to 40 per cent. Additionally matriculation marks were now given 10 per cent weight.

He said setting separate criteria for admissions for students for engineering and medical colleges was a violation of Articles 9, 18, 25 and 25-A of the Constitution.

Siddique said the new formula adopted by the UHS gave too much weight to applicants’ performance in a two and a half hour test.

He also questioned the transparency of marking system for the medical colleges’ entry tests. He said that UHS Vice Chancellor Malik Hussain Mubashir had been accused of relaxing rules for his son when he had to sit the test.

Siddique further alleged that the PMDC had not ensured the uniformity of curricula across medical colleges under Section 33 of the PMDC Rules of 1962.

He requested the court to issue a directive to the PMDC to abolish the entry test requirement and to ensure that all applicants had an equal opportunity to get admission in medical colleges.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 27^th, 2011.