LAHORE: The Chief Minister’s Examination and Admission Reforms Committee has recommended abolition of entrance test for admission to medical colleges and other professional institutions after the intermediate examinations.

Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif is expected to give his final nod to do away with the entrance test after holding public parley.

The committee has also recommended that permission be granted for re-starting the practical examination with the condition that the examiner should assess the marking sheets based on answers of three written questions at the examination centres.

Private institutes will be represented in boards BoG

The Examination and Admission Reforms Committee meeting was presided over by Punjab Education Minister Rana Mashhood Ahmed Khan, wherein a majority of the participants were of the view that male and female students belonging to urban and rural areas of the province should be provided with a level playing-field for getting admission to professional colleges and universities.

Mr Khan said some 20 years ago entrance test was introduced when ‘booti mafia’ was very active in various educational boards of the province and the performance of educational boards was a big question mark. However, he claimed that during the last six years, the Punjab government brought about transparency in eight educational boards of the province.

He said the ‘booti mafia’ had been eliminated and reforms enforced in examination system under which answer sheets were sent to various boards under fictitious roll numbers and the examination of same kind was being held in all educational boards from a pool comprising examination questions.

Due to this procedure, the minister said the system of educational boards had improved and getting more marks through rote learning had been discouraged. In this situation, he said, it was not appropriate to put burden of additional expenses on parents of male and female students for taking examination again through entry tests.

Therefore, the minister said, recommendation was being sent to the chief minister for ending the entrance test from next academic session.

The meeting decided that representation would also be given to private educational institutions in the Board of Governors of intermediate and secondary education boards.

IMPERSONATORS: The Board of Intermediate and Secondary Education monitoring teams on Saturday caught two impersonators red-handed in the evening session Islamic Education paper in the secondary school certificate (supplementary) examination for 2014.

The impersonators were appearing in the examination in place of candidates Hassan (roll number 220509) and Yar Haq Parast (roll number 220443) at boards cluster examination centre. Both the impersonators were handed over to the police and unfair means cases were registered against the candidates.

Published in Dawn, September 21th, 2014