ISLAMABAD: A decision by Shaheed Zulfikar Ali Bhutto Medical University (SZABMU) to get questions for its question bank from its own faculty members has raised eyebrows.

Students and some of the faculty members fear that professors may share the questions with their “favourite” students. They have appealed to the Higher Education Commission (HEC) to take notice as it may compromise the secrecy and transparency of the exams.

However, the university management said it was a routine matter and no one should get worried about it as transparency and secrecy will never be compromised.

According to a document dated March 7 and available with Dawn, SZABMU’s Controller Examinations Dr Anber Saleem issued a notification addressing all departments of Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences (Pims) and the faculty to submit 100 questions each for mid-term assessment (MTA) theory and final exams. The document has been sent to around three dozen faculty members.

Students say inclusion of questions from own faculty will compromise exam transparency; VC claims it’s a routine practice

A student said in order to ensure standards of postgraduate exams every medical university had been directed by HEC to conduct their MD/MS (MTA and final) exams through external examiners.

A faculty member, requesting not to be named, claimed that the practice had never been done in the past at SZABMU and all questions for the pool bank were provided by external examiners since the inception of SZABMU, the only federal medical university in Islamabad,.

“This is sheer violation of HEC rules and with this practice how will SZABMU award degrees which are of terminal qualification in Pakistan,” he questioned.

He claimed that universities like UHS Lahore had even introduced external examiners in MBBS to ensure fairness contrary to SZABMU which has overruled the existing system and rather than reaching out to subject specialists of relevant specialties, Pims own faculty has been given the task to send questions which is unprecedented.

It may be noted that doctors of Pims are teaching at the university.

However, SZABMU Vice Chancellor Dr Tariq Iqbal, while talking to Dawn, said it [process] was being practiced in all universities. He said students should not get worried about it.

“We have a question bank having hundreds of thousands of questions but those questions need to be reviewed and modified. There is a condition for faculty members to submit at least 50 questions and then they can become supervisors. Those questions are sent to the curriculum committee which circulates them as a number of questions become obsolete because of the continuous advancements and a number of new questions are included in the question bank because of new researches,” he said.

Dr Tariq said even after exams, a post-exam analysis (which is also called post hoc analysis) was done to check the quality of questions.

“If 100pc students give wrong answers of a question, the question is deleted considering that it has some issue of understanding. If 100pc students give a correct answer of a question, the question is again deleted considering that it is very easy to attempt,” he said.

“It is a routine exercise of universities that they include new questions and delete a number of questions from question bank after one or two years,” Dr Tariq added.

Published in Dawn, March 17th, 2024