KARACHI, July 14 Describing the practice of allowing students to attend classes at those colleges where they are not given admissions as “unlawful” and “an act of favouritism”, two senior professors of government colleges have urged the authorities concerned to stop the practice as it “violates the spirit of the Centralised Admission Policy”.
The college professors, who are also members of the Sindh Professors and Lecturers Association (SPLA), told Dawn recently that the Centralised Admission Policy (CAP) committee should also ensure that admissions to the first year classes in the next academic session be given strictly in accordance with the existing capacity of colleges.
To avoid overcrowding in classrooms, the number of students in each section of a class should not exceed the limit of 80 students per section, they said.
A senior teacher at the DJ Govt Science College, Prof Iftikhar Azmi, who is also the additional secretary of the Sindh Professors and Lecturers Association (SPLA), said that they recently held a meeting with the provincial additional secretary of education, Ramzan Awan.
Prof Iftikhar said that Mr Ramzan had agreed that since there was no provision of allowing students to attend classes at colleges where they were not enrolled, the CAP committee should refrain itself from issuing such permission.
Last year, Prof Iftikhar said, several hundreds students had been allowed to attend classes at colleges of their choice by the provincial directorate-general of colleges.He said that such an act had violated the spirit of the CAP, according to which admissions were supposed to be given purely on a merit basis.
He claimed that the practice had only benefited the children of 'influential people'.
Saying that the admission committee which was formed last year under the Centralised Admission Policy had accommodated more students in colleges as than their capacity, he added that 22,000 admissions were given last year in class XI (first year) in the commerce group alone, whereas only 14,000 seats were available in all commerce colleges of the city. Similarly, 3,000 to 4,000 extra admissions were given in first year pre-engineering sections of colleges, he said, adding that such acts on the part of the last year's CAP committee had caused overcrowding in classrooms and badly affected the student-teacher ratio.
Emphasising the need for opening more commerce colleges in the city and additional sections for pre-engineering students, he said that it was beyond his comprehension as to why the education department was reluctant to open some colleges in the city when their buildings and construction works had already been completed.
When asked how the education department would be able to open more colleges to overcome the problem of overcrowding in classrooms when there was an acute shortage of teachers, he said that SPLA had already requested the chairman of the Sindh Public Service Commission to arrange interviews of college teachers on a pri
ority basis, so that the recruitment process of college teachers could be accomplished before the commencement of a new academic session which was scheduled to begin on August 1.
Another senior teacher at the Adamjee Govt College, who endorsed the views expressed by Prof Iftikhar Azmi, said that last year the CAP committee had accommodated more than 80 students in each section of a class. Prof Ather Mirza said that this was a violation of rules.
According to the rules, the student-teacher ratio in a class should 1 to 80, he said.
But the CAP's committee not only accommodated more than 80 students in a class but also gave permission to a large number of students to attend classes at colleges where they had failed to get admissions under the merit-based Centralised Admission Policy.