PESHAWAR, Nov 30: All intermediate and secondary education boards in the NWFP have decided to reduce the examination fees to a reasonable level and to make the examination system smoother.

In a meeting held here on Tuesday with the NWFP Governor Syed Iftikhar Hussain Shah in the chair, it was decided that all boards would be bound to implement the fees structure and adopt a common strategy to mitigate the problems being faced by the students.

The meeting, attended by the NWFP Secretary Schools and Literacy Sherzada Khan and Chairman NWFP Textbook Board Attaullah Khan and all the chairmen of the BISEs, also approved the move to reduce the examination fee for regular students of 9th and 10th classes from Rs350 to Rs300 and from Rs390 to Rs330 for private candidates.

Similarly, the examination fee for intermediate first year candidates has been fixed Rs200 instead of Rs265 for regular candidates while private candidate will pay Rs275 against the previous fee of Rs320.

The meeting also decided to allow candidates who failed in their 9th class examination but deemed eligible to take 10th class examinations to reappear in the compartment papers in the 9th class examination side by side the 10th class without paying any additional fee for the 9th class papers.

However, candidates who would take both the first and second year of intermediate examinations would be charged Rs30 for every compartment paper instead of Rs80. All the boards have already discontinued charging Rs70 as DMC fees on the directive of the governor.

Now it has been decided that candidates would not be required to obtain a separate provisional certificate; instead all relevant particulars would be included in the DMC to make it a more compact document.

However, in case of issuing duplicate DMC; if the original one is lost, the respective applicant will have to deposit Rs250 for each such document. Moreover, the one-time registration facility for candidates appearing in the SSC examination will continue.

All candidates who wish to improve their marks in SSC examination will pay Rs500 instead of the Rs565. The meeting fixed Rs100 as late fee on submission of examination form, which would be received, double and triple after the due date subsequently.