KARACHI, March 28: The educational boards in the province have disapproved the proposals regarding merger of educational boards and setting up of a Super Board in every province for conduct of examinations at SSC and HSC levels. According to educational board sources, a meeting of chairmen of all secondary and intermediate education boards was held recently, with Anwar Ahmad Zai in the chair, which among other matters also discussed a couple of proposals.

These proposals were advanced after a meting of education ministers from four provinces and Azad Kashmir and the federal education minister, held in Karachi on Dec 5, 2005. The ministers had also discussed the unification of different education boards for conduct of different exams.

There were two major proposals – cut in number of boards and establishment of one master board with some satellite centres in each of the provinces.

Some of the participants of Dec 5th meeting were of the opinion that a super board should be developed in each province, which would prepare one question paper for all the candidates of SSC or HSC examinations in the province and ensure assessment of those scripts as well.

Regarding satellite boards, it was emphasised that those would be responsible for affiliation and recognition of institutions and enrolment and collection of examination forms.

Lately, the Sindh education department passed on the minutes of the December meeting to different educational boards in the province for comments, which would finally be incorporated in the education department’s views for the meeting of the provincial education ministers and federal minister, scheduled for April in Peshawar.

Anwar Ahmad Zai said that after consultation it was considered appropriate that boards should be allowed to continue working and practice things as usual, otherwise, there were chances of deterioration in the quality of SSC and HSC examination.

Talking of the consensus developed in the meeting, Mr Zai said that the idea of reducing the number of educational boards in the province was disapproved with the notion that the number of boards, one each on a centralized location at one defunct division of Sindh, was reasonable while any reduction in number could cause administrative problems as well.

The boards meeting also rejected the proposal pertaining to establishment of central or super board, saying that it would disharmonize the process of existing system of paper setting and their distribution to examination centre.

It was also noted that under the proposed system it would be difficult for educational boards to detect the culprits if any of the question paper was leaked before time. At present, Karachi boards prepare papers on day-to-day basis and distribute those for centres in the morning of examination, while other boards in the province prepare paper in advance and kept them in bank-lockers prior to distribution for exams, said Mr Zai.

He said that the meeting was of the view that in order to standardize the examination papers and improve those further, the educational boards should develop a joint bank of questions at least in major subjects.