ISLAMABAD: The Inter Boards Coordination Commission (IBCC) forum on Tuesday recommended that all boards in the country should follow uniform timing for the start of matriculation and intermediate papers.

“To align with university admissions and to prevent any inconvenience to the migrating students, the forum resolved that all BISEs shall follow a uniform academic calendar by starting papers for SSC in the 1st week of March and papers for HSSC in the 1st week of April from the year 2025,” read a press release issued by the IBCC.

The meeting of the forum was held here at the Federal Board of Intermediate and Secondary Education (FBISE), with national coordinator Qaiser Alam, who is also head of FBISE, in the chair.

Besides, heads of other boards, Executive Director IBCC Dr Ghulam Ali Mallah, attended the meeting, which also discussed discontinuation of choice in the question paper for students.

The forum resolved that each question in Section B and Section C may be given an alternative within the same cognitive domain and difficulty level without compromising the students learning outcomes (SLOs).

To facilitate the students in the early issuance of final certificates for SSC and HSSC, it was decided that every member board will issue final certificates within six months of the declaration of results.

Moreover, to ease the attestation of documents, it was decided to connect all BISEs/BTEs with the IBCC attestation portal for online verification of records.

The press release said that to create awareness among the youth of the country and society for tolerance, knowledge, patience, and improvement of ethical behaviour, the forum resolved to plan activities for the whole year to perform in affiliated institutions of member BISEs and decided to mark the year 2025 for following in the footsteps of the holy prophet.

The press release said that the FBISE and Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa Boards have performed exceptionally well in establishing their ‘question item banks’. However, there was a need to establish a ‘centralised national question item bank’ accessible to all education boards in Pakistan to ensure a standardised set of questions for uniform assessment.

The Forum has decided to establish such a repository at the IBCC level. This initiative will help in maintaining consistency in the difficulty level, format, and quality of questions across different boards, promoting fairness and equality in assessments. By using a centralised question bank, the variability in assessment content will be minimised, ensuring that students from different boards are assessed on similar knowledge and skills, making the evaluation process more equitable.

Published in Dawn, February 28th, 2024