LAHORE, July 25: A girl and a boy on Wednesday committed suicide by taking poisonous substances allegedly after their failure in matriculation annual examination for 2012 in Lahore and Gujranwala in separate incidents.

Safina, 15, a resident of Block-5, B-2, Green Town, was declared fail in two subjects. After knowing about her result, in a fit of frustration she gulped toilet bleach and died.

Similarly, Zaryab, a resident of Canal View Colony, Gujranwala, swallowed poisonous pills upon his failure in the examination and died.

Commenting on committing suicide by students in their teens, educationists say the education system had gone ‘marks-obsessed’ to an extent that failure had become a stigma and children were unable to handel the failure.

Recently, the Lahore College for Women University, in collaboration with the Child Rights Movement (CRM) and Child Care Foundation (CCF), had launched an initiative stressing on adoption of student-centric approaches in educational institutions.

LCWU Vice-Chancellor Dr Sabiha Mansoor said the  varsity had established Human Rights Watch Group to measure stress on students. She said all educational institutions must ensure that students’ thoughts and self-esteem must be respected.

CRM’s Baela Raza Jamil said we should get rid of the pressure and tension which had taken centre stage in our education system. She said the mindless approach of testing children and giving some of them ‘abnormally’ high marks was creating pressure for many others and those scoring low were felt it was end of the world for them.

Referring to the reward for highest scorers in terms of expensive awards and foreign tours, Ms Jamil said diversity among students should be respected.

She stressed the need for revisiting the paradigm of high achievers and suggested that the government should recognise talent in all forms and introduce schemes to honour innovative students.

Suggesting the need for a balanced approach, she said, a dialogue needed to be expanded to look into what society was coming too.

“We are going to dark ages of education,” she deplored.