There was no edition of the newspaper on Oct 17, 1970 on account of Shab-i-Barat and the 19th anniversary of the martyrdom of Quaid-i-Millat. The following excerpt is from the previous day’s edition.

KARACHI: Karachi Board of Education has decided to appoint a committee to investigate the cause of failure of a very large number of pre-medical group students at the recent Inter-Science examinations, Secretary, Board of Education. Mr M.I. Haq said yesterday [Oct 15].

Commenting on the problem, he said that the present new course entails a larger portion of mathematics which, in his opinion, was fairly difficult for non-medical students having no mathematical base.

He said that the responsibility for this failure should be shared by teachers as well as students. He said that there has been a general craze for studying science no matter if a student is mentally prepared to grasp and assimilate the subject [and] quite often the students choose science subjects against the results of the aptitude tests held by the Board on a voluntary basis.

The Secretary, who has remained Controller of Examinations for the last six years, found most of the candidates answering questions in a haphazard manner. They probably did not know the proper method of answering a question.

Published in Dawn, October 17th, 2020