KARACHI, March 30: Leaders of a private schools’ management association on Thursday alleged the bureaucracy of showing indifference to the cabinet’s decision made in favour of hundreds of thousand of Class IX students of the province, who were opposed to the composite examination system, imposed by the federal government.

At a press conference, they said that, initially, it was the Sindh education department that shilly-shallied about grievances and annoyances of students, parents, teachers and school managements on the issue of composite examination, and now, it was the bureaucracy in the Sindh secretariat which appeared to be failing to make up its mind.

The Senior Vice-President of the Private Schools Management Association, Sharfuzzaman, said that in view of public resentment in the media and street demonstrations by academics and students, and reservations expressed by the province’s educational boards, the governor and chief minister of Sindh had ordered that the issue of the new examination system at the SSC level should be placed before the Sindh cabinet.

Though late, the cabinet met on March 22, with Chief Minister Dr Arbab Rahim in the chair, and finally passed a resolution saying the composite examination was unsuitable for students of the province and that efforts should be made for holding Class IX exams in 2006 on priority basis, Mr Sharfuzzaman said.

He added that it was unfortunate that the bureaucracy was taking the issue very lightly and despite a passage of almost nine days, no notification had been issued while immense confusion and unrest was prevailed among students.

Flanked by representatives of private school managements, including Mansoor Sadiq, Abdul Naeem, Syed Mohiuddin, and Ghulam Rabbani, the PSMA leader said the bureaucracy should stop playing havoc with the aspirations of students.

It called on the bureaucracy not to ridicule the disagreement of political quarters, at the helm of affairs in the province, towards the composite exam system and issue the much-awaited notification, restoring Class IX exams in the province.

To a question, he said those who were still busy lobbying in Islamabad for implementation of the unwanted composite exam system were ill-advised and were working against the Sindh government and the decision of its cabinet.

He said the quarters which wanted to ignore the Sindh cabinet decision and sensitivity of the Sindh governor and chief minister should be held accountable for not being education- or student-friendly, and for attempting to exploit the situation in favour of a limited quarter.

Coming to other issues of education in the province, the association’s leaders said that books of chemistry and biology for Urdu medium students of matriculation could not be marketed by the Sindh Textbook Board, which told a lot about the slackness observed on the part of the education department.

While threatening of launching protest campaigns against the overall working of the education department in the province, the PSMA also demanded for implementation of the previous schedule pertaining to summer vacation and academic session in the case of schools.