JUST a note to commend Dawn TV on exposing the real face of evil committed in several departments. The other day I watched surprise visits by the TV team to examination centres. Not only teachers and students but also education authorities and relatives of students are responsible for this nasty act of cheating in examinations and it is not difficult to imagine the calibre of the turnout.

Apart from what was shown in the Dawn programme, I may draw the attention of media (educational authorities are supposed to  know it hence reminding them is of no use) to those schools where pre-planned cheating in examinations is organised by absolute collusion of educational authorities, examiners and relatives of students sitting for examinations.

You will not find a single student there who doesn’t cheat openly or where someone else is not appearing on his behalf for the examination; where handpicked teachers are chosen to act as ‘examiners’; where parents and relatives of examinees act as their aides with open books and solved papers; where the superintendent of the examination centre sleeps at home beefed up with illegal gratification; where the educational and administrative authorities shelter the crime and criminals.

A Government secondary school in FC area is one of such dens to name one such examination centre. Dawn should conduct an inquiry against affairs of this examination centre through its own intelligence and then raid it without notice. The raiding team, apart from other investigations and observations, should especially check the chowkidar’s rooms and handbags of the so-called ghost teachers conducting examinations there.

I am writing this only to tell you of the plight of educational system in Pakistan due to the existence of such schools where I am unfortunately a teacher myself and where I have volunteered never to sit as an invigilator for fake examinations conducted publicly with such shamelessness, disgrace and remorse by the colluding elements.

A TEACHER Karachi