Intermediate results: Board chairman defends system

Students protest errors; controller blames ‘faulty invigilation’.

LAHORE:

After around 100 students marched to the Board of Intermediate and Secondary Education Lahore office on Tuesday morning to protest inaccuracies in the result, the board chairman held a press conference in the evening denying that the results were incomplete or inaccurate.

The board had announced results for the Intermediate Part-I on Monday morning. BISE Public Relations Officer Qaiser Mahmood had claimed it was the first time that the Intermediate Part-I results were announced on time.

Students on Tuesday said that the board had marked them ‘absent’ in some of the exams.

According to board records, 1,712 candidates were absent during the exams while 292 had written wrong roll numbers on their answer booklets.

Chairman Nasrullah Virk – during the press conference at the board’s office – advised students who had been marked absent to submit an application. He said those who had entered wrong roll numbers were required to submit an application in their handwriting along with a fee of Rs1,000 following which the board would cross check the data with the centres where the candidates had sat for the exams.

He said those who wanted their papers to be rechecked would have to submit Rs1,000 with the application. In case the complaint was found to be genuine, the money would be refunded.

Officials said that 35 applications had been received by the board from students who claimed that they were wrongly marked absent.

“Our system is transparent and open. We did not compromise on standards in the compilation of the results,” said Virk.

Applications alleging inaccuracies and mistakes will be accepted by the board till October 16.

The board chairman expressed doubts over the protests, saying that the students had been “provoked to stage a protest instead of following the procedure”.“Some of the students might have faced inconvenience. We are willing to recheck data and amend the results where appropriate,” he said.

Controller of Examinations Anwar Farooq, however, blamed ‘faulty invigilation’ at examination centres for the mistakes.

He said school and college princiapls often hesitated to provide competent teachers for invigilation, which led to mistakes.

Farooq said the board would try to address the weak areas in the matriculation supplementary exams, which will commence today. He said the board hoped to introduce training sessions between November and January for teachers regarding proper invigilation.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 3^rd, 2012.