Adamjee, PECHS College students come out on top as pre-engineering, general results out

Top scoring student raises concern over standard of education in govt colleges.

KARACHI: For the students who appeared for their pre-engineering and general group intermediate examinations in May, Monday was very stressful.

They sat biting their nails as they waited for the Board of Intermediate Education Karachi (BIEK) to announce the result.

At an event organised to appreciated the top three students, the board’s chairperson Prof. Anwar Ahmed Zai said that the board was not only responsible for announcing the result, but held itself up for accountability too. “To set a standard is an undeniably difficult task,” he said as he talked about schools that did exceptionally well this year. “To sustain it, is even harder.” He added that the top 20 students would get a monthly stipend of Rs500.

Girls managed to do a tremendous job in dispelling the impression that they could not handle higher-level mathematics, as they clinched half of the top-ten positions in the pre-engineering group and swept all ten top positions in the general group.

Pre-engineering group

According to the results announced by the board’s controller of examination, Imran Khan Chishti, 25,384 students sat the exam. Nearly 75% of the candidates were boys. That was in sharp contrast with the breakdown for pre-medical examination candidates, of whom only 19% were boys.

The Adamjee Government Science College’s Yahya Bin Shahid came first by scoring 90.90% marks, followed by PECHS Government College for Women’s Mariam Malik (89.36%) and the Aga Khan Higher Secondary School’s (AKHSS) Muhammad Zaheer (88.81%).

While comparing this year’s results with last year, Ahmed Zai said that the overall pass percentage increased from 52% to 57%. Nearly five per cent of all successful students got through A-1 grades, followed by 11% with As, 14% with Bs, 16% with Cs and 10% with D grades.

The Adamjee college outshined more than 200 institutions as over half of its 503 students achieved A-1 grades. Four of the college’s students captured the top-ten positions. Similar to the pre-medical results, the percentage of Adamjee’s students who scored A-1 and A grades came out to an astonishing 87%.

Students of the PECHS Govt College for Women did a good job dispelling the impression that girls could not handle higher-level mathematics, as 85% of its 306 students scored A-1 and A grades in the pre-engineering exams. The college also bagged half of top-ten slots for best performing students in the group.

General group (Computer Science)

Of the 1,912 students who sit the general group exams, nearly 41% were successful, compared with 34% last year. Enrollment numbers were also up as 30% more students chose the group this year when compared with last year.

Sir Syed Government Girls College’s Fatima Idrees came first by achieving 89% marks, followed by Bahria College (Karsaz)’s Sumbul Yousuf (87.45%) and Hayat-ul-Islam Girls College’s Hina Hanif (83.18%).

Role of tuition centres

Adamjee college’s Yahya Bin Shahid, who came first in the pre-engineering results, said that he had to take tuitions because he could not master the subjects while attending classes at college. “While almost 70% of students used to show up for classes, teachers took scheduled classes hardly half the time,” claimed the high-achiever.

For AKHSS’ Muhammad Zaheer, who came in third, it was his parents’ expectations that worried him throughout the course of his studies.

NED University

General group students, however, expressed concerns that the NED University of Engineering and Technology did not allow general group students to be admitted at its computer engineering programme.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 4^th, 2012.