Intermediate commerce results: Institute of Business Education students make a clean sweep

KARACHI:

Just a month after Kiran Amin scored the second position in the intermediate premedical exams, her brother, Ahsan Amin, came first in the intermediate commerce group by scoring 83.81% marks.

On Thursday, the family was over the moon about their academic winning streak as the Board of Intermediate Education (BIEK) announced results for intermediate commerce exams held earlier this year in May.

“It’s not like our family has a lineage of top scorers which makes this even more special,” Ahsan told the The Express Tribune while grinning broadly. “The credit goes to my father for maintaining an ‘army rule’ when it comes to our studies.”

Ahsan was not the only one to score from the private business school, Institute of Business Education, as his classmates, Kumail Hussain and Mohammad Hasnain, scored the second (83.86%) and third position (82.18%) respectively.

The school started in 2003 as an initiative of Tabani’s School of Accountancy which trains students for the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Pakistan exams. Apart from Kumail who wants to pursue his studies at the Institute of Business Administration, the other two have already enrolled at Tabani’s.

IBE’s principal, Prof. Ghulam Ali, told The Express Tribune that it was the second time his school had swept all three positions - the first being in 2006. “We made history with our very first batch of 12 students when one of them scored the first position in 2005,” said the principal. He credited the success of the institution to a “galaxy of talented faculty members”. “Our teachers arrange assessment tests every week to monitor the teaching and learning process.”

According to school policy, if students miss school due to the law and order situation, then classes are held on either Saturday or Sunday.

The students vouched for the faculty’s dedication, saying that they did not feel the need to seek tuitions outside the school. “If the students at public colleges received the same guidance as us throughout the academic year, they would have also achieved these positions,” said Hasnain.

The fourth position (81.90%) was shared by Syed Haider Hussain of Commecs Institute of Business and Emerging Sciences and Maisam Naqi Fareshta from IBE.

Low success rate

According to the results announced by the board’s controller of examination, Imran Khan Chishti, around 32,074 students took the exam out of which nearly 54 per cent were successful. Almost 57% were boys while 43% were girls.

In comparison to last year’s results, Chishti said that the overall percentage of successful students slightly decreased from 55% to 54%.

Only 80 students got A-1 grades, while three per cent passed with As, 11% with Bs, 20% with Cs, 18% with Ds and two per cent with E grades.

Earlier, at a ceremony organised to honour the top ten students, BIEK Chairperson Prof. Anwar Ahmed Zai said that over the years, commerce had witnessed a massive influx of students.  But unfortunately, public colleges failed to facilitate students, said Zai. “The number of students pursuing commerce at intermediate level is more than the combined number of students of premedical and pre-engineering groups.”

Zai stressed that with the yearly increase in participation of private colleges, there is an immediate need of self-accountability at public colleges.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 28^th, 2012.