LAHORE, Aug 6: The entrance test for admission to medical and dental institutions should be abolished forthwith, according to a unanimous recommendation by the 13-member committee constituted by Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif to assess the pros and cons of the system introduced in the late 1990s.

The committee members discussed the issue at length this week and concluded that “it (entrance test) is a burden on students which must be done away with.”

It noted that “a record number of 2,353 candidates with 900 and above marks in FSc failed to pass the 2007-08 entrance test,” and most of them belonged to Dera Ghazi Khan, Bahawalpur, Multan and Faisalabad. While the candidates with minimum marks, that is, 826 in FSc managed to get admission to the medical colleges by virtue of the entrance test system. Most of them were from Lahore and Islamabad.

They also revealed that the academies operating in big cities played a ‘major role’ in the success of their students. They used to charge up to Rs70,000 for two-month preparation for the entrance test, “an amount the students of far-flung areas could not afford.”

They also observed that the pattern of entrance test was quite different from that of FSc examination. “Complaints of leakage of question paper in entrance test are common and the process of preparation of results is not transparent, with many reports of cheating,” observed the committee.

The members further pointed out that the students had to go through the complete syllabus of FSc Part-I course after appearing in Part-II examination, which is painstaking to say the least. Besides, “the entrance test is held two to three months after declaration of FSc results that piles agony on the students.”

The committee maintained that since the examination system of all eight intermediate boards was foolproof, there was no need to put another check in the form of entrance test.

Most of the committee members -- the higher education secretary, the additional secretary health (technical), vice-chancellors of University of Health Sciences and King Edward Medical University, the College of Physicians and Surgeons Pakistan president, principals of Nishter Medical College Multan, Quaid-i-Azam Medical College, Bahawalpur and Punjab Medical College, Faisalabad, the chairman working group on health, a representative of Pakistan Institute of National Affairs (PINA), and Dr Allah Bakhsh, Dr Ali Cheema and Dr Naeemuddin Mian -- attended the meetings.

The recommendation will be submitted to the chief minister this week. According to a source in the provincial health department, Shahbaz Sharif may announce abolition of the entrance test at the medal-awarding ceremony after announcement of the intermediate results on Aug 15.