LAHORE, April 6: The Punjab Education Department has constituted a five-member committee to reevaluate the “Examination reforms and internal assessment system” notified on March 22 last year and implemented for the 2002-03 academic session.

The committee, headed by Punjab University Institute of Education and Research (IER) director Prof Dr Munawar Sultana Mirza, has been given seven weeks to thoroughly evaluate the new system and submit its report to the education secretary.

The other four committee members are Punjab Textbook Board chairperson Dr Fauzia Saleemi, IER Associate Professor Dr Hafiz Iqbal, Government Girls Comprehensive High School Wahdat Road principal Nasreen Latif and Community Schools director Jamil Najam.

The education department has asked the University of Education vice-chancellor and the directors of public instruction, secondary education and elementary education to assist the committee in its deliberations.

Official sources claimed that the education department was compelled to get the new system reassessed following reports from senior education department officials and headmasters that the system had failed to improve teaching and learning from Class-I to VIII. It had rather eased the students and teachers.

They said the education department had stated in its order that reevaluation of the internal assessment system was needed to see whether it had been an improvement over the previous system or not.

When contacted, Prof Munawar Mirza said the committee would take stock of the ground realities while visiting schools in urban and rural areas, and assess the effects of the new system.

She said the committee had held its first meeting and developed a framework for the seven-week exercise. “The committee will not do any desk work, and will remain in the field most of the time.”

Prof Mirza however remarked that no system could work without reward and punishment. “Why students should work hard and teachers impart education diligently when they know that every student will be promoted to the next class by the end of an academic session.”

She said the committee would examine whether the students were taught their courses and assessed on a six-weekly basis in all schools of the province or not.

She said the committee would also assess if the decision to implement the system across the board was right, or should the system have been implemented under pilot projects.

It may be mentioned that a committee of senior education department officials had recently objected to the new teaching and assessment system and reported difficulties in its implementation.

The report, sent to the Punjab education secretary, said that the concept of ‘assessment’ was not clear and a majority of teachers and heads of schools were still not tuned to it.

The committee of senior education department officials said the new system had been implemented with one stroke of pen and teachers and headmasters not trained in its implementation.

The new system, which replaced the age old education and assessment system in no time, required of the heads of schools to implement it without identification of their responsibilities and allocation of the necessary resources.

The committee had also revealed that the system did not take off when it was implemented with effect from April 1 last year, because the relevant textbooks reached the market only after May 15. Similarly, second part of the books could only be made available in the market in October.

It said there was more confusion with regard to the new system in the wake of ambiguous model papers and review report published by Directorate of Staff Development/University of Education.

The confusion aggravated when the boards of intermediate and secondary education issued new model papers after six months. Later, some publishers also introduced question papers and progress reports that were different from those issued by the DSD/UE and education boards. “The material published by different publishers comprising objective-type questions affected the standard of education,” the committee observed.

The committee said the teachers also remained confused regarding the six-weekly review tests and reports that lost their importance when it was clarified that they would have no weightage in the annual examination. Still, the new system consumed more time in assessment and preparation of reports than imparting of education.

The students also faced problems as they had to start preparing for the next phase when they did not even understand the first six-week studies.

The new system also did not offer a balance in objective and subjective items and was unworkable for linguistics. It also deteriorated the writing skills of students, the committee maintained.— Mansoor Malik