Education board responds positively

Secretary Education tells High Court Rawalpindi bench it will extend admission deadline till January 31.

RAWALPINDI: A court disposed of the petition of private school candidates after education officials assured of necessary steps to facilitate them. Secretary Education told the Lahore High Court Rawalpindi bench on Wednesday about extending the admission deadline till January 31 and accommodating students from remote areas.

Earlier, private students had filed a petition against Board of Intermediate and Secondary Education (BISE), Rawalpindi. The action was taken after the mode of receiving admission applications had been shifted online, with the last date of receiving them as December 19.

The students of class 9th and 10th were facing problems in accessing the admission forms and completing the registration process. The Punjab’s Higher Education Department had made it mandatory for the candidates to get registered online for the 2011 examinations.

During the course of hearing, Chairperson BISE Chaudhary Abdul Hafiz, Controller Examinations Rawalpindi Abdul Sattar and a representative of Higher Education Department Lahore Dr Majid Naeem, appeared before the court.

BISE chairperson assured the court that the board would take necessary steps to facilitate the students. He also said that the registration date would be extended till January 31 next year.

However, Abdul Hafiz said that the board did not receive any complaint regarding the slow process of online registration from the students of Azad Kashmir, who reside in the remote areas.

Dr Naeem, who was representing the Higher Education Department, told the court, “We made the online system in order to facilitate the students. They faced more problems while sending their admission form through postal mode.”

Representing the students, Advocate Raila Saleem Suboohi had told before the court that students of remote areas were facing problems with the online system.

While replying to the concern, the chairperson said that the board will send their staff in those remote areas where students were facing problems and establish centres to facilitate them.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 23^rd, 2010.