KARACHI, March 8: The Board of Intermediate Education, Karachi, appears to be getting lenient on the issue of 75 per cent compulsory attendance by students.

Sources in the board said that in a meeting attended largely by the members of the board and the representatives of the Sindh education department and the city government a hot debate was witnessed on the issue of attendance.

Though no final agreement was reached on the subject, majority of the members expressed the view that leniency should be observed at least this year, added the sources.

At the outset of the meeting it could be said that students of the Science, Commerce and Arts groups enrolled at over 200 government and private colleges might be allowed to appear in examinations, despite the fact that their attendance remained far below than the required 75 per cent.

Some of the members also expressed their dissatisfaction with the Sindh education department’s role in connection with the Sindh cabinet’s approval to the idea of compulsory attendance.

It was said that teachers and principals should take note of the situation and ensure a culture of punctuality observed both by students and teachers, otherwise the deteriorating state of discipline would mar the whole purpose of education.

Initially there was a strong desire that attendance rules should be implemented, but at some later stage there was a sort of consensus that the board should entertain all the candidates with 35 per cent attendance.

The sources said the board’s administration had been asked to provide data in the next meeting of the board, enabling the members to understand what the situation would be if the condition of 75 per cent attendance was brought down to 35 per cent.

The debate on attendance was initiated in the board meeting following a letter from the controlling authority of the board urging to consider a letter to the competent authorities from the city Nazim in connection with the attendance role.

Though the city Nazim had appreciated the sincerity of the government and the BIE regarding the implementation of the attendance rule, he wanted some relaxation this year, the first time the rules would be implemented.

The sources said that some of the members in the meeting expressed their concern over the academic environment and facilities at colleges and maintained that the trend of absenteeism should be given a serious thought as students at colleges were the same who had been attending regularly their classes till the passing of their matriculation examinations.

It was further learnt that a couple of members wanted that the required attendance limit should be lowered to 20 per cent, otherwise 30000-35000 students of class XI would be unable to appear in the intermediate examinations this year.

Many options were discussed in the meeting and some thing would be taken as final by meeting of the board to be held next week. A BIE member said that one option was to bring the condition of attendance to 50 per cent, wherein a provision would also be made for an exemption of 15 per cent granted by the college principal and the chairman of the board.

The member added that examinations forms from those who were short of attendance could be accepted if the affected candidates of the Commerce and Arts group chose to appear as private candidates instead of regular ones. According to the BIE assessment some 20000 students of Science, Commerce and Arts group would have to remain without examinations if the 75 per cent attendance criterion was implemented.

Under the rule, heads of institutions are required to certify that a student has attended 75 per cent of the lectures and 75 per cent of the periods assigned to practical work in each of the subjects in which he or she desires to be examined.

The meeting was told that BIE had detected over 60 colleges where students were able to attain 40 per cent attendance. The figure could go up since the scrutiny of attendance records was still in progress, added the source.