KARACHI, May 20: The Board of Intermediate Education Karachi (BIEK) officials caught as many as 22 students — all boys — cheating during the English and mathematics part-II papers of the Higher Secondary School Certificate (HSC) exams on Monday.

Eleven of these students were using unfair means openly during the morning mathematics paper as a result of which the services of two invigilators were also terminated immediately.

“I can understand students smuggling in a piece of paper here or there but bringing in a stack of 10 pages means something else. What were these invigilators doing, allowing them to keep these pages with them?” BIEK chairman Professor Anwar Ahmed Zai said while speaking to Dawn on Monday.

“We found out that this was going on at the Government Degree College Gulshan Block 7. We caught six boys cheating in one room and another five doing the same in the next room with the invigilators turned a blind eye to all,” he said.

“Both the invigilators from the two rooms were asked to leave their duty and we brought in their replacements,” Prof Ahmed Zai said.

“They will not be on invigilation duty during the exams anymore.”

He said that the BIEK had tried their best to curb cheating during exams by changing the paper format.

“The new pattern has 50 per cent questions which require short answers, 20pc multiple choice and 30pc theory questions. In this way students are not able to cheat from their notes as they can only solve the paper if they have studied and understood the course. Meanwhile, the examiners, too, who used to award extra marks here and there to their favourite students can only mark a question right if the answer is correct,” he said.

“I hold the students as well as the teachers responsible for all the cheating going on in our examinations these days. Due to the new exam paper format, since the last three years, the overall results have also gone down to 50 per cent from the earlier 70 per cent,” the chairman added.

The remaining 11 students caught cheating on Monday were using unfair means during their afternoon English part-II paper.

“Most of them were caught from Ideal Degree College in Gulshan Block 6,” Prof Ahmed Zai said.