Exam results: For 70% of Matric Science students, college doors open

About 11.14% sail through with a top grade.

KARACHI:

For the 128,361 students of the Matric science group who sat their exams in April this year, the anxious wait ended on Monday after the Board of Secondary Education Karachi announced results. About 70 per cent of them had a reason to celebrate as they passed and managed to keep their dreams intact.

Though the boys unexpectedly bagged the first two positions in this year’s exams, girls continued to outshine their male counterparts by securing twice as many ‘A-1’ grades – the highest attainable letter grade.

A ceremony was organised by the board at its conference hall to honour the top three position holders. However, the celebration was marred by livid journalists, who vociferously protested the fact that Express News had been given the results before other news channels. They confronted the board’s officials and demanded an explanation for the leaked results.

As attempts to pacify the journalists continued, the board’s chairman, Fasihuddin Khan, got up on stage and announced the names of students who topped the exams. Muhammad Kashif, a student of Eden Public School, bagged the top position as he secured 811 marks out of the total of 850. He told The Express Tribune that he faced serious difficulties in preparing for the exams because of intermittent load-shedding in his neighbourhood. “I often had to use an emergency light till the battery ran out,” he said. Kashif, who aims to become an engineer, said that though he feels that the matriculation system does not test student analytical skills, he tried his best to avoid rote learning.

The second position was shared by Mairaj Khalid Khan of FF Public School in North Karachi and Sana Khan of the Karachi Public School, located in Gulshan-e-Iqbal. Both of them had obtained 805 marks or 94.71 per cent. Sana said that she intended to pursue medical education at the Dow University of Health Sciences. She did not shy away from stating her opinions about the Cambridge schooling system, which she felt is becoming a more popular choice as it uses robust tests for gauging the clarity of concepts.

Mehjabeen Qasim of Shaheen Public School secured the third position with 803 marks. She said that English is the preferred medium of instruction as the new generation is more at ease with the language than the mother tongue. “Another reason why this is so is that by studying in English, you can understand the whole world,” she said.

According to the statistics released by the board’s controller of examination, Rafia Mallah, 90,996 people out of the 128,361 who sat the exams have passed. As many as 14,300 or 11.14 per cent of the students obtained the ‘A-1’ grade. Around 18.67 per cent of them obtained the ‘A’ grade while 20.59 per cent managed to secure a ‘B’ grade. About 15.15 percent passed the exam with a ‘C’ grade while 5 per cent managed to scrape a ‘D’.

The controller of exams told The Express Tribune that the marks certificates will be issued to the schools after 20 days. She added that the result of 265 students was withheld because they had allegedly resorted to unfair means in the examination and their cases were still pending.

Special candidates

The board also announced the results of around 120 special candidates who appeared in part I of the annual matriculation examinations this year and 101 special candidates who appeared in part II. The special students who topped the exam all belonged to the Dewa Academy for the Deaf, which is located in Gulshan-e-Iqbal. Batool Ashfaq secured the first position by obtaining 91.05 per cent while Hira Siddiqui bagged the second position by scoring 90.94 per cent. The third position was shared by Yusra Tanveer and Syed Bilal Asif, both of whom obtained 770 marks or 90.58 per cent.

With a smile on her face, Batool told The Express Tribune that she wants to attain education till the university level. “I’ve been studying around eight hours a day to attain this goal,” she happily said through sign language.

Published in The Express Tribune, July 24^th, 2012.