KARACHI: Apathy by boards on grace marks irks students
By Our Staff Reporter
KARACHI, Sept 5: The candidates, desirous of obtaining grace marks to pass their SSC or HSC examinations are perturbed over the alleged lethargic approach adopted by the two education boards regarding their cases.
Students having applied for award of maximum of 2 per cent grace marks, with retrospective effect, stated that they could miss the opportunity to apply for registration, as external candidates, for different examinations of educational boards and universities as authorities concerned were dilly-dallying in issuing revised marks certificates to them.
They said that they had submitted the applications in the light of government’s grace marks offer in the early July, but till date there was no indication about delivery of mark-sheets to prove they had cleared the examinations.
With the approval of the Sindh governor, who is also the controlling authority of educational boards in the province, the boards of secondary and intermediate education, had invited applications from candidates for award of grace marks up to 17 marks in the case of SSC examinations and 22 in the HSC examinations, to the failures of matriculation and intermediate examination between the year 1999 and 2002.
The response was overwhelming and thousands of application forms, against a payment of Rs200 each, were sold within days. According to information given by the high officials at the two boards, about 12,000 applications have been received at the BSE, while about 5,000 forms at BIE.
The BSE Controller of Examination Mohammad Salim Khan told Dawn that board had already started scrutiny of the applications and it was likely that applicants would start getting their respective mark-sheets by the end of October.
The controller of examinations at the BIE, Prof Asif Pasha Siddiqui, said that mark-sheets pertaining to Commerce faculty were already being issued, while Pre-Engineering and Pre-Medical groups applicants would start getting the new mark-sheets latest by Sept 12 and Sept 15, respectively.
Sources in the two boards, however, maintained that authorities were still not clear about the mechanism as the policy did not mention that which of the mark-sheets, already possessed by candidates, would be held valid for the grace marks purpose.
They elaborated that supposedly a students appearing in 1999 examinations failed to clear a paper only because he was short of seven marks, then he took another examination in 2000 and performed worse than the last examinations. In such a situation, which of the two mark-sheets should be entertained, either that of 1999 examination or that of 2000, they questioned.
A senior academic suggested that boards should take into consideration the performance of a student in his latest examination, having exhausted his or her all sanctioned chances to appear in examination.
However, education officials are of the view that boards should give maximum benefits to students in view of the Sindh governor’s gesture towards failures and should not entangle in modalities and legalities.
