KARACHI, April 20: A survey of a few colleges, including those of females, conducted by Dawn, revealed that the colleges were not very strict regarding the students who failed to ensure 75 per cent attendance during the present academic session.

Unlike last year, neither the educational board nor the colleges seem to be serious in penalising the students under the compulsory attendance rules.

Sources said that a number of colleges had maintained a subject wise attendance record of their students, but it seemed that all was forgotten now, as neither the Sindh education department nor the district officer (colleges) and the educational board had shown any enthusiasm in that regard.

Attendance data was available with the board as well, but admit cards had allegedly been issued to the colleges irrespective of the fact that whether the students concerned were eligible for these or not.

The whole process of bringing discipline in academic institutions, particularly regarding the students, which had got momentum during the last one and half years, appeared to be collapsing again with the emergence of the new political setup, a senior teacher commented.

Some colleges, allegedly, did not like the idea of strictly implementing the attendance rules as they understood that in the absence of sufficient staff it would not be appreciable to demand regular attendance from the students.

However, low attendance and failure of teachers in ensuring students’ presence in the class rooms can also be attributed to the coaching centre mafia and political parties, which engaged a considerable number of students to meet their own goals.

When the chairman of the Board of Intermediate Education, Karachi, Prof Iftikhar Zaidi, was contacted by this reporter, he said that he was not sure about the status and utility of the attendance data collected from colleges every months in the past.

On the other hand some college principals maintained that they had been very strict on the attendance issue and, in some cases, did not even refrain from issuing warning letters to parents, asking them to ensure upto mark attendance of their wards in the colleges, otherwise they could be debarred from appearing in examinations. “We checked the problem at the early stage and that was why situation in my college was satisfactory,” a girls college principal said.

A college principal said that the Board had sent all the admit cards to colleges, with the directive that those should be issued to eligible candidates only. To a question, he said that till date he had not received any application for condoning any short-of-attendance case.

HSC DATE-SHEETS: Meanwhile, the city colleges have failed to provide date-sheets and centre lists, along with examination centre list, to their students appearing in the Higher School Certificate, annual examinations, commencing on April 24.