PESHAWAR, Dec 16: The Board of Intermediate and Secondary Education (BISE), Peshawar, has decided to start inspection of examination centres by teams of officials to effectively curb cheating by students. For this purpose, the board would involve district and agency education officers to ensure transparent conduct of examinations, officials said.

The board would also continue with its traditional monitoring of examination halls by individual inspectors of grade-17 and above, they said.

The officials said that in future different teams of credible officials from the BISE Peshawar and respective education offices in Peshawar, Charsadda, Nowshera, Chitral and Khyber and Mohmand agencies would supervise the Secondary School Certificate (SSC) and intermediate examinations.

They said that the decision of inspection of examination halls by teams of officials was made keeping in view that an individual inspector could easily be obliged or pressured by some people or administration of the respective educational institutions for allowing cheating.

Sharing his experience, a senior official told this correspondent that he had visited many educational institutions as inspector during the board examinations and whenever he stayed for longer time in the examination halls some high ups or friends would call him requesting to leave the hall, as the students couldn’t do cheating in his presence.

He said that when there would be several members in the team all of them couldn’t be obliged and the students would be unable to cheat in the exams.

The officials admitted that currently cheating in board examinations with the connivance of the invigilation staff and support of the administration of respective educational institutions was a common phenomenon.

They said that the education department was already taking steps for bringing transparency in the board examinations and had been deploying superintendents and deputy superintendents through computerised draw for the last two years.

It also deployed the other invigilation staff through computerized draw in the recently conducted SSC supplementary examination to discourage the trend of teachers’ getting desired halls for minting money and allowing cheating.

When contacted, Peshawar BISE chairman Prof Mohammad Shafi Afridi said that the supervising team for each district and tribal agencies would consist of senior professors nominated by the board, executive district officers (EDOs), agency education officers (AEOs) or their nominated persons and some of the senior principals of the colleges and schools.

Supporting monitoring of exam centres by official teams, Mr Afridi said that the EDOs and AEOs knew about locations of schools and colleges, law and order situation and behavior of people living there. He said that the inspectors would hardly know about location of the educational institutions and people of areas where they were sent.

For instance, he said, an inspector from the Peshawar city would be reluctant to visit the Khyber Agency or schools on the border with the tribal areas due to law and order situation, but the officials of local administration would visit such places without any hesitation.

Mr Afridi said that he had also requested the EDOs and AEOs to nominate credible teachers as invigilation staff for the board examinations.