KARACHI, Aug 5: As many as 82,510 seats in different faculties have been allocated for first year (class XI) admissions at 119 male and female colleges and 31 higher secondary schools in the city.
The admission process will begin on Aug 7 with the sale of admission forms and brochures at 40 branches of HBL, while the first merit list is expected to come out in the last week of the month.
Briefing newsmen about the admission process and related measures, the provincial education manager (colleges), Dr Mohammad Ali Shaikh, said on Saturday that arrangements had been made to give admission to all applicants, coming from different streams of education, ie, secondary school certificate examination, technical education examination and GCE-O level or its equivalent examinations. The briefing took place at the PECHS Foundation Govt. Girls Degree College, which has been declared as the admission committee’s headquarters.
He said that in view of the drop-out rates of the previous years, it was likely that 14 to 19 thousand candidates, out of the total 97,000 successful candidates of the SSC examinations, would not apply for admissions to first year classes.
“So we think that accommodating 78,000 to 83,000 candidates of the major SSC stream and another 5,000 successful students of other examinations in government colleges and higher secondary schools will not be a difficult task”, Dr Shaikh added saying that the existing allocations of admission seats at 150 government institutions can be aincreased by some percentages if the applicants were more than our projection.
He said that the salient features of the admission policy, under which the centralised admission committee work in the case of Karachi colleges of the Sindh government, were almost similar to those of the previous years.
This year we have added a commerce college located in Gulistan-i-Jauhar, in the admission list, for which staff would be available from among those who had been withdrawn from St Patrick’s College, which was denationalised, along with St Joseph’s College for Women, by Sindh government in May, 2005, he informed.
Replying to a question, Dr Shaikh said that he had been informed that over 900 regular posts of college teachers were vacant in city colleges and as such he had decided to allow the college principals hire faculty as per there needs, under “cooperative teacher scheme” in the ensuing academic session as well.
“However, we are to get 200-250 teachers through public service commission, besides some ad-hoc appointed teachers, and as such the teaching situation would hopefully remain manageable”, he mentioned.
To another question, Dr Shaikh, said that he personally felt that educational buildings and facilities should be solely used for educational purposes and as such he would surely approach the law enforcing agencies, including Rangers, to vacate the college education buildings which were in their use, so as to improve the teaching environment and overcome the space problem, he added.
Flanked by college Prof Mohammad Asghar Khan (secretary CAP), Prof Sabiha Parvez (member CAP) and Mohammad Afzal, an official, Dr Shaikh told newsmen that the entire admission process would be kept transparent and all placements for admissions would be made only on the basis of marks the applicants carried. There will be no second merit or placement list for any faculty, but applicants who felt that they had been deprived of their right will be allowed to submit “claim forms” at designated centers to be set up at ten colleges, he added.
According to the admission schedule, issuance and submission of placement forms will be observed from Aug 7 to 19, while placement processing will continue for a month after and the last placement list would be released latest by Sept 25. Colleges would finalise the admission in a week’s time, while teaching for newcomers will commence in the first week of October.
In addition to a website (www.cap.edu.pk), the provincial education manager (colleges) office has also dedicated telephone help-lines (4313551 and 4313552) for related information and guidance of students in regard to admission process. Officials on telephones will be available from Aug 9 and onwards, said Prof Mohammad Asghar.
