KARACHI, July 12: Officials of the Board of Secondary Education Karachi (BSEK) on Thursday morning displayed remarkable prescience when they announced the Secondary School Certificate (SSC) examination results with two per cent grace marks added across the board, just a few hours before Sindh Governor Ishratul Ibad formally approved the award.
“We have included two per cent grace marks in the result of each student,” said a top BSEK official, adding proudly that the Board had managed to announce the result on time despite serious hiccups in the gigantic exercise, not the least of which was the power breakdowns.
On Thursday evening, Dr Ibad approved the award of two per cent grace marks to students of class 9, 10, 11 and
12 since they had been affected by load shedding, power outages, rains and floods during the examination season. The decision applies to all students of the given grades across the province.
Asked how the grace marks had been added before formal approval had been granted, the official explained that the governor had asked for “some mechanism to compensate the students and in its recent meeting in Larkana, the Sindh Examination Boards Committee recommended the grace marks and forwarded the proposal to the controlling authority, Dr Ibad, for approval.”
This nevertheless does not explain how the grace marks were added to the results, which were announced on Thursday morning before the governor’s approval was notified. Top BSEK officials failed to give Dawn a satisfactory answer in this regard.
The results of an estimated 150,000 BSEK candidates were compiled at least a day before their announcement, while the governor’s approval was notified on Thursday evening.
The four other boards that had been waiting for Dr Ibad’s approval before announcing results, ie Hyderabad, Sukkur, Larkana and Mirpurkhas, compiled their results a day before the Karachi board but chose to wait for formal approval of a decision that affected the grades of over 300,000 students.
A senior educationist commented that the BSEK should have waited a couple of days until after the governor’s approval was notified.