KARACHI: The Sindh High Court has directed the secretary of the boards of examination and universities to file a report on prevailing mechanism with regard to the criteria of amount specified for invigilation and other expenses on examinations.

The SHC also asked the secretary to call the record of the last two years regarding the invigilation amount from all the education boards of the province.

The court put the chairmen of Karachi, Sukkur, Larkana, Hyderabad, Mirpurkhas and Shaheed Benazirabad education boards as well as education secretary (schools/colleges) on notice for Nov 12.

A single bench of the SHC headed by Justice Salahuddin Panhwar also issued notices to the registrars of the Institute of Business Administration, Karachi and IBA Sukkur to appear as amici curiae (friend of court) and submit recommendations to curb the “copy culture” in examinations.

The bench issued these directives while hearing an appeal of a female officer of the education department regarding preparation of an alleged fake invigilation bill by another education officer for annual examination 2011.

She alleged in the appeal filed in 2017 that a senior education officer along with an official of the National Accountability Bureau approached and pressurised her to release the payment.

The bench observed that this issue had raised serious questions about the invigilation system as a defective invigilation could surely result in allowing the substitution of underserved with deserved.

“The invigilation amount is paid out of public money, therefore there must be a visible transparency in use thereof, which too, with object to achieve maximum,” the judge wrote in the order.

The bench raised some questions that whether exams duty can be considered as part of teachers’ job description; whether allowing teachers/school staff to act as invigilators of a nearby school was justified; whether teachers would be eligible to receive invigilation amount and whether boards of examination were sole regulators to conduct, supervise exams and curb copy culture.

Published in Dawn, November 3rd, 2019