KARACHI: The Universities and Boards Department of Sindh has started work on partially outsourcing the matriculation and intermediate annual examinations in the province.

In this regard, all education boards have been asked not to issue tenders for the outsourcing of examinations because the Universities and Boards Department will issue a joint tender on its own behalf for interested private parties to hold the exams over various stages.

This decision was taken in a meeting of the chairmen of the Sindh boards held under the chairmanship of Universities and Boards Minister Ismail Rahoo on Tuesday.

Officials said that during the meeting, the chairmen of boards were told that it would no longer be necessary for them to tend to all the four stages of the examinations such as paper setting, conduct of the examinations, assessment and releasing of results.

They said that the department was of the view that they would be looking at several options to see which private company was capable enough of carrying out the task. Still, for now they are going to look into partially outsourcing one of the exam stages.

The chairmen were informed that this was now a government policy and had to be implemented. Therefore, they would be going for partial implementation from this year, the officials said.

There was also talk of outsourcing the conduct of examinations to a district or town; though these matters are still under review.

However, various stakeholders had already rejected the government move.

Representatives of the Sindh Professor and Lecturers Association (SPLA), All Sindh Schools and Colleges Association, Pakistan Teachers Organisation Sindh and Sindh Professors and Lectures Subject Specialist Association had held a press conference last week and rejected the notification issued by the Sindh Universities and Board Department to outsource the exams to a private party.

They had said that the government should fix the problems of corruption and ad hocism in boards and fill vacant posts on merit instead of outsourcing the exams.

Published in Dawn, March 29th, 2023