Price to pay: For a mere Rs8,000, students can go from fail to pass
Nearly 15,000 students who failed have been marked passed without taking supplementary exams.
Some officers have started blackmailing students, who passed their exams with flying colours, of reducing their marks unless they pay them. PHOTO: STOCK IMAGE
KARACHI:
Gone are the days when students would sulk after failing an exam. After paying a mere Rs8,000 to an official at the board office, they can now get their marks changed from a fail to a pass.
In the 2013 annual Matriculation examinations, a total of 14,071 students obtained the grade A-1, which is given for marks above 80 per cent. These official marks are mentioned on documents available with The Express Tribune. But the current computer records of the same exams show that more than 20,000 students received A-1 grade.
The total number of students who appeared for annual SSC exam in 2013 was 138,121 of which 99,652 were declared successful and 38,469 candidates could not get passing marks, according to a senior officer at the Board of Secondary Education, Karachi. Of the total failing students, only 21,681 appeared in the supplementary exams and 11,551 managed to increase their marks to a passing grade, he added.
“The irony is that majority of those who even did not appear in the supplementary exam have now been placed on the annual successful candidates list,” claimed the officer, on the condition of anonymity.
For example, a student, with roll number 510802, took the Matric exam in 2013 and failed, but the board officials declared him as a successful candidate in later records. Similarly, a student of the science group, with roll number 404954, confirmed that he failed the annual exams but he was given additional marks after the results were announced.
There is little chance that the board gave passing marks by mistake. “There is hardly a one or two per cent correction percentage,” the officer admitted. “Thousands of candidates cannot come under this category.”
The officer explained how students and their parents are willing to pay money to increase their marks in certain subjects to make sure they get admissions in medical and engineering colleges. The mark sheets available with The Express Tribune show that more than 300 students have been given identical marks in the class nine exams of 2013. “For the mathematics, physics, chemistry and biology exams, the officials have just given one computer command and allotted either 60 or 70 marks to students in each subject,” the officer pointed out.
The issue came to the fore recently when an internal dispute started among the board office employees. The officer who is the in-charge of the manual records refused to verify the dozens of computerised mark sheets of those students, who had failed some years ago but ‘magically’ passed on the basis of their computerised results. “They [students] managed to get the computerised mark sheets ‘fixed’ but the manual records show they failed,” said another officer, who blamed the corrupt officials in his department for earning big bucks from this scam.
Some officers have started blackmailing students, who passed their exams with flying colours, of reducing their marks unless they pay them. Student Duaa Khan, who secured 86 marks in mathematics, lost her mark sheet some time ago. When she went to get a duplicate certificate from the board office, she found out to her utter surprise that she was marked failed. “My marks were cut down from 86 to six only,” she told The Express Tribune.
The examination controller, Noman Ahsan, claimed there is no room for discrepancy or scams on their part. “Due to a computer programming error, the results of a few students was mistakenly changed but it has been corrected now,” he told The Express Tribune, before requesting to keep the scam under wraps through repeated calls to The Express Tribune.
Published in The Express Tribune, January 8th, 2015.
Gone are the days when students would sulk after failing an exam. After paying a mere Rs8,000 to an official at the board office, they can now get their marks changed from a fail to a pass.
In the 2013 annual Matriculation examinations, a total of 14,071 students obtained the grade A-1, which is given for marks above 80 per cent. These official marks are mentioned on documents available with The Express Tribune. But the current computer records of the same exams show that more than 20,000 students received A-1 grade.
The total number of students who appeared for annual SSC exam in 2013 was 138,121 of which 99,652 were declared successful and 38,469 candidates could not get passing marks, according to a senior officer at the Board of Secondary Education, Karachi. Of the total failing students, only 21,681 appeared in the supplementary exams and 11,551 managed to increase their marks to a passing grade, he added.
“The irony is that majority of those who even did not appear in the supplementary exam have now been placed on the annual successful candidates list,” claimed the officer, on the condition of anonymity.
For example, a student, with roll number 510802, took the Matric exam in 2013 and failed, but the board officials declared him as a successful candidate in later records. Similarly, a student of the science group, with roll number 404954, confirmed that he failed the annual exams but he was given additional marks after the results were announced.
There is little chance that the board gave passing marks by mistake. “There is hardly a one or two per cent correction percentage,” the officer admitted. “Thousands of candidates cannot come under this category.”
The officer explained how students and their parents are willing to pay money to increase their marks in certain subjects to make sure they get admissions in medical and engineering colleges. The mark sheets available with The Express Tribune show that more than 300 students have been given identical marks in the class nine exams of 2013. “For the mathematics, physics, chemistry and biology exams, the officials have just given one computer command and allotted either 60 or 70 marks to students in each subject,” the officer pointed out.
The issue came to the fore recently when an internal dispute started among the board office employees. The officer who is the in-charge of the manual records refused to verify the dozens of computerised mark sheets of those students, who had failed some years ago but ‘magically’ passed on the basis of their computerised results. “They [students] managed to get the computerised mark sheets ‘fixed’ but the manual records show they failed,” said another officer, who blamed the corrupt officials in his department for earning big bucks from this scam.
Some officers have started blackmailing students, who passed their exams with flying colours, of reducing their marks unless they pay them. Student Duaa Khan, who secured 86 marks in mathematics, lost her mark sheet some time ago. When she went to get a duplicate certificate from the board office, she found out to her utter surprise that she was marked failed. “My marks were cut down from 86 to six only,” she told The Express Tribune.
The name of the candidate has been withheld.
The examination controller, Noman Ahsan, claimed there is no room for discrepancy or scams on their part. “Due to a computer programming error, the results of a few students was mistakenly changed but it has been corrected now,” he told The Express Tribune, before requesting to keep the scam under wraps through repeated calls to The Express Tribune.
The two transcripts above are of the same candidate (name withheld) for the same examination with a duplicate certificate (above) after seeking review, and the original (below) certificate issued showing discrepancies in the marks allotted by the board, the corrections they noted (hand written by board officials) and then their failure to adequately redress the mistakes.
Published in The Express Tribune, January 8th, 2015.