PESHAWAR: Universities and colleges in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa are highly unlikely to announce new admissions in near future as all eight boards of intermediate and secondary education have failed to declare FA and

FSc exam results due to the strike by their employees against the government’s proposed reforms.

The board employees have boycotted work for 10 days by locking their offices to protest proposed reforms in board and examination system.

“Normally, we begin classes of first semester at the end of September in every academic year but this time around, I fear that classes will begin with the minimum delay of one month as boards have yet to announce results of intermediate exams,” a senior staff member of the University of Peshawar told Dawn.

Protest rally planned in Peshawar today against board centralisation

He said the education boards were to declare those exam results in the middle of August but that couldn’t happen due to the prolonged strike of employees.

As part of educational reforms, the government has planned to centralisematriculation and intermediate board exams as well as paper setting and marking in the province.

On the directives of Chief Minister Mahmood Khan, a high-level committee has been formed to develop a mechanism for the early implementation of that decision after legislation.

Under the plans, the Peshawar education board will be the ‘mother board’, while the other seven boards will work as its ‘branches’.

The official said if education boards declared intermediate exam results by the end of September, which was not possible keeping in view the strike of employees, the admission to both colleges and universities would be completed by the end of next month.

He said universities announced admissions soon after the declaration of intermediate exam results by all boards in the province, while the submission of admission forms, their scrutiny, preparation of merit lists, and holding of interviews for admission took a lot of time.

The board employees, besides holding a pen-down strike, are also staging protests on their premises.

Chairman of the All Boards Employees Coordination Council Tariq Safi told Dawn that the proposed board reforms were unrealistic as it was not possible to prepare a single paper for the students of the entire province, while there were fears of its leak during distribution.

“We are against the idea of a single education board in the province. It takes decades to establish education boards at divisional level but the government wants to abolish them all except the Peshawar one abruptly and without proper justification,” he said.

The council chairman said the board employees would stage a rally outside the Peshawar Press Club on Thursday [today] to ‘force the government into withdrawing its single board decision’.

He said the protesters had held meetings with the education department bosses but the matter remained unresolved.

Mr Safi said the abolition of boards for merger would also disturb seniority of their employees, while the so-called reforms would lead to litigation.

On the directions of the chief minister, a working group

has been constituted to review the board exam system and explore the possibility of a single education board for examinations.

A member of the group told Dawn that no reforms had so far been finalised as the panel had held just one meeting and discussed the proposed reforms ‘a little’.

The group consisted of elementary and secondary education secretary Motasim Billah Shah, special secretary to the CM Secretariat Adil Saeed Safi, Federal Board of Intermediate and Secondary Education chairman Qaiser Alam, director (education) Hafiz Mohammad Ibrahim, chairman of the Peshawar BISE Prof Nasrullah Khan, chairperson of the Kohat BISE Samina Altaf, Principal of the Government Higher Secondary School Hatian Mardan Alamgir Khan, former additional director at the Directorate of Curriculum and Teacher Education Zulfiqar and deputy secretary

(boards and training) at the education department Lal Saeed Khattak.

Published in Dawn, September 15th, 2022