KARACHI: “I don’t understand why people think that home economics students only learn how to make parathas. I don’t make parathas,” said Marium Khalil, a student of Ra’ana Liaquat Ali Khan Govt College of Home Economics, who stood first in the home economics group part-II exams as the Board of Intermediate Education, Karachi, announced its results with that of the science pre-medical part-II and medical technology part-II results here on Monday.

Marium, who bagged 975 marks out of a total of 1,200 with an 81.25 percentage, said there were so many subjects being offered at her college such as mirco biology, food and nutrition, but people assume it to be some backward place pushing women into the dark ages.

Maria Naseem, also from the same college, who stood second with 971 marks, was a quiet sort but Sidra Kamran, who was third with 960 marks, also had no intention to stay in the kitchen. “I certainly don’t want to become a doctor or engineer like just about everyone. I want to go into visual studies,” she said.

Meanwhile, most of the position holders in all the results announced on Monday happened to be girls. There were also a couple of ties. Like in the pre-medical exams two girls topped with the same marks, and two also ended up third with identical scores. Bhawna Bai of Govt College for Women Shahrah-i-Liaquat and Mehreen Umer Zubair of Liaquat College of Management & Sciences obtained 999 out of the 1,100 marks, or 90.82 per cent.

Left behind by just one mark, the second position was taken by Syed Faizan Ali of Adamjee Govt Science College with 998 marks while Khushbakht Karrar of St Lawrence Govt College and Sidra Mohammad Hussain of PECHS Govt College for Women were third with 981 marks each.

Earlier, BIEK chairman Anwar Ahmed Zai said he was happy to be announcing the results a month ahead of schedule. “We were supposed to announce on Sept 15 but thanks to the non-stop work by our committed staff, who worked throughout Ramazan and didn’t even avail Eid holidays, we are here today with the results,” he said.

Speaking of the colleges that have been giving zero per cent results, the chairman said that they had tried to solve all their problems. “Where they needed lab equipment, we provided them that, where they were short-staffed, we provided them with able staff, but even after that when they failed to come up with results, we also have to do something about that. Therefore, we have decided to shut down at least four colleges that have been giving zero per cent results for four years now,” he said.

The chairman also shared his observation about a visible increase in students from O-Levels backgrounds. “This year we got 30 per cent more students, who came to college after having done their O-Levels,” he shared.

Published in Dawn, August 12th , 2014