Security issues: Last minute change of Matric exam venue

Centre switched from Metropolitan Academy to Shaheen Public School, Campus III.

KARACHI: A school located in Gulistan-e-Jauhar announced on Tuesday that it would not serve as an exam centre for around 1,100 students after its staff was roughed up and threatened by political activists.

While talking to The Express Tribune, Metropolitan Academy’s administrator, Faisal Rizwan, said that around 11am on Tuesday, between 10 and 12 armed men barged into the school and attempted to take hold of it during the class X English exam.

Rizwan said the school was located in a ‘sensitive’ area and requested the Board of Secondary Education Karachi to either cancel its designation as an examination centre or make a venue where only girls could sit the papers. The school had even faced threats from party activists last year, he added.

When the school announced its decision not to conduct more exams, Rizwan alleged that the board’s secretary, Hoor Mazhar, threatened to cancel the school’s affiliation. The board’s controller of examinations, Noman Ahsan, told The Express Tribune the responsibility of providing security to examination centres fall on the provincial administration. “Why blame the board in a situation when law enforcement agencies have failed to cooperate?” asked Ahsan, as he refuted the school’s claim for the commitment of security. “There will be disciplinary action against the school. An alternative arrangement has been made for students to sit for exams at Shaheen Public School, Campus III, in Gulistan-e-Jauhar.”

This decision announced late Tuesday night might not even reach all of the 1,000-odd students who are to sit for their biology exam at 9am. “The board’s decision is not the solution of the issue…they are showing highhandedness,” said Private Schools Management Association chairperson Sharfuz Zaman.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 10^th, 2013.