Let the show begin: Struggling for a ‘brighter’ future in the dark

Students brave load-shedding besides battling nerves on first day of SSC exams.

KARACHI:

Amidst intermittent complaints of cheating, power outages and puddles of rain water at the examination centres, over 100,000 students of class IX and X sat their first Secondary School Certificate (SSC) paper on Monday.

A total of 317,000 science and general group students are appearing for this year’s exam, which will continue till April 25 across 223 examination centres in the city.

The exam, conducted in two shifts, saw around 85,000 science group students take their computer exam in the morning while 15,000 general group students tackled the English paper in the afternoon.

The Board of Secondary Education Karachi (BSEK) examinations controller expressed his satisfaction over the arrangements though he admitted there were a few exceptions.

“The major issue we faced on the first day was power outages even though we had formally requested the Karachi Electric Supply Company to exempt our centres during the exam hours,” he told The Express Tribune. “Perhaps, the unexpected rain made the situation worse.”



The pouring rain wasn’t the only set back for some students, who lined up with their parents outside the BSEK office in North Nazimabad to get their admit cards on the exam day. It turned out that the entire fiasco took place because 1,600 students could not be delivered their admit cards. The Express Tribune learnt that three sacks of admit cards were returned to the BSEK by a private courier company only three days before the exam because they failed to locate the addresses mentioned on the cards.

Brushing aside the problem, BSEK chairperson Fasihuddin Khan insisted on giving a tour of an examination centre to show the board’s “flawless exam arrangements”. Contrary to normal practice, the chairperson himself picked St. Jude’s High School in Hussain D’Silve town. All necessary arrangements were in place at the school and all supplies were in, except for electricity.



The picture at Government Boys Secondary School in sector 11-F, New Karachi, was nevertheless quite dismal. Not only did the exam start 90 minutes behind schedule, the students were sitting on broken furniture inside the building still under construction. The students were cheating openly at the centre, but the teachers blamed the board. They minced no words when criticising the board for sending 900 students to a centre that could only accommodate 400.

Sensitive centres

Around 30 centres were declared ‘extremely sensitive’ by the BSEK. The centres, reportedly in Lyari, Orangi Town, Landhi, Korangi, Baldia Town, Malir and SITE, were to be provided with vigilance teams during the exam hours. Though the board had asked the provincial government to deploy security personnel, a survey of these areas revealed that the security was extremely tight at a few centres while no personnel were deployed at others.

136 students caught cheating

SSC exams also kicked off in Sukkur on Monday under the Board of Intermediate and Secondary Education (BISE) with 136 students caught cheating. The BISE Sukkur controls districts of Sukkur, Khairpur, Ghotki and Naushero Feroze.

BISE Sukkur examinations controller Mehmoodul Hassan told The Express Tribune that a total of 99,358 students are appearing for the exams, of which 69,749 are males and 29,609 are female students. Talking about the exam centres, he said that 152 centres have been established for males and 40 for females. Over 500 internal and external superintendents have been deployed and 13 vigilance teams have been constituted to conduct raids and discourage use of unfair means during the examinations, he added.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 9^th, 2013.