KARACHI: Security concerns didn’t create that much of a bother during the first day of the Secondary School Certificate part I and II exams at some 223 examination centres of the city as much as rain and power breakdowns did for the examinees. Four students were caught cheating.
The skies opened and it began raining heavily minutes before the students were to sit their class IX and X Computer Studies theory exams at 9am on Monday. “It goes to the credit of the invigilators who seeing a small attendance initially waited for the students to get to their respective centres. So the morning paper at certain centres was delayed. Otherwise if they had started the paper, the others’ entry to the centres would have been blocked after half an hour,” said Private School Management Association chairman Sharaf-uz-Zaman.
“The Board of Secondary Education had earlier appealed to the Karachi Electric Supply Company to try and supply uninterrupted electricity to the areas where the centres are located at least but nothing happened and the candidates had to appear in the exam in heat and darkness,” he added.
“And due to the unexpected rain the schools couldn’t even bring out the desks in the open yards or in verandas or outside corridors to let them solve their papers outside,” he explained.
“This is a country where power is insured during a big cricket match but not when children take exams,” he regretted.
Traffic flow was also disturbed due to water accumulated on Sharea Faisal near FTC. “We live in Defence Phase-I. My daughter was getting anxious so we left home early. Good we did that otherwise we wouldn’t have been able to reach the centre on time,” said a mother outside the Gulistan Shah Abdul Latif Bhitai School in Sindhi Muslim Society, where the English Compulsory Paper II was being held in the afternoon.
It was also observed that the promised Rangers and police vans were missing from most centres due to the rain. Some did stick around for a while in the morning but there was no sign of them later in the day during the English Compulsory Paper-II.
But William John, the vice principal of St. Judes High School near Kati Pahari in North Nazimabad, said that four Rangers vans provided them security during the examination and there was also a visit by the deputy commissioner in the morning. “Since we are a big centre with 42 rooms and have had a terrible experience last year, we demanded security. If things go smoothly for a few more days then maybe we’ll reduce the vans,” said the vice principal, who is also the centre superintendent.
Meanwhile, Khalid Shah, who heads All Private Schools Management Association, said that he found no big problem as far as the examinations were concerned. “I think it all went smoothly on Monday although there had been the problem of changing centres at the last minute,” he shared.
“We sat up with the exam controller, secretary and chairman of the BSEK till late Sunday night to solve the centres problem when parents and schools protested that some students couldn’t go to take their exam in a certain area which could be hostile. Then some centres which had had bad experience last time didn’t want to hold exams. Some were also getting threats. So we solved their problems case by case,” said Mr Shah.“The board issued the students new letters during the night but then the centres, too, had to be intimidated about the change to make space for the extra students, which we did early in the morning at around 8am,” he said.
According to BSEK Controller Examinations Noman Ahsan, five boys were caught, four of whom were cheating at the Govt SM Public School, Nazimabad, while one who was nursing a hand injury at a centre in New Karachi brought with him a writer who turned out to be an intermediate student. “All these cases have now been referred to the unfair means committee. The students will be allowed to appear for other papers though,” he provided.
“But as compared to previous times, we are satisfied that things during the examinations on the first day went rather smoothly,” he concluded.
