KARACHI, Feb 19: The government may reconsider its policy on composite examinations after two years for SSC or HSC studies under educational boards throughout the country.

Talking to Dawn, the Senator and Chairperson of the Standing Committee of Education, Scientific and Technological Research, and Vice-President of Pakistan Muslim League, Punjab, Razina, on Saturday said she had already talked to the federal education minister on the issue of combined exams for classes IX and X, and XI and XII, which were planned to be held from 2007 onwards.

She said in addition to press statements and letters from different quarters published in the press, she herself had heard parents and students during visits to different cities and that was why she had requested the education minister to review the decision. Grievances were increasing on the issue, she noted.

“So far, what I have gathered from stakeholders is that they dislike the proposed system of examinations,” she said in reply to a question, adding that the federal education minister had hinted for a review meeting on the subject soon.

Quoting the minister, she said that the decision for holding composite examinations after two years, instead of examinations each year, was taken at a meeting of the provincial education ministers and secretaries of education departments of provinces, but if the feedbacks were found significant, he could have a second thought as well.

Senator Razina was of the view that in the absence of any scientific survey on the subject of examinations, it were the teachers, educational administrators, students and parents, who should be considered as stakeholders and heard in the process of making any policy related to them.

Teachers from schools and colleges and position holders repeatedly opposed the new system and held it overburdening and causing rote learning.

The largest body of college teachers of Sindh at a press conference on Feb 16 had also criticized the new exams system and demanded for its withdrawal, saying it would prove illogical, particularly when semester system or continuous assessment system was upheld worldwide.