ISLAMABAD, Dec 9: The Federal Directorate of Education (FDE) has decided to hold centralized final examinations for class 8 in the public educational institutions under its administrative control, official sources told Dawn here on Saturday.

This decision, they said, would be implemented from the next year’s annual examinations, scheduled to be held in February- March 2002.

Both model educational institutions and the federal government schools had been included in the purview of this decision, however, both the set-ups would be having separate centralized examinations for their students, they added.

The officials said this decision had been taken to standardize the quality of education in different Islamabad public schools and the testing standards. They said the FDE ran hundreds of schools in both urban and rural areas of Islamabad and it had been noticed that the quality of education and examination in all these schools varied greatly.

The other objective of introducing this system was to install a credible system of teachers’ accountability and ensuring transparency in the conduct of examination and subsequently in marking of the scripts of the students. “Through the centralized examination, we hope to instil the spirit of hardwork amongst the students and a sense of competition and challenge that would help bring quality improvement in education,” they said.

The FDE had last year introduced centralized exams for class 5. Parents and teachers had pointed out several flaws in the new system, which officials say, are determined to remove by the time centralized examinations are held early next year.

One of the flaws identified during the class 5 exams was the difference in the scheme of studies being taught at various schools. Now, the officials say, uniform scheme of studies has been introduced in both federal government and model educational institutions. — Zahra Syed