Deserving more than pat on back

LAHORE, April 14: The top position holders of the primary and middle standard examinations, conducted by the Punjab Examination Commission, are awaiting a word of appreciation even two weeks after declaration of results.Many among them are hoping against hope that Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif, who is generally quick to announce cash prizes for the high achievers, will announce an incentive for them. The PEC had declared the province-wide results on March 31 and worked out top positions at the district level. Although it conducted uniform Class-V and -VIII examinations across Punjab, it did not work out top position holders at the provincial level. The top scorers are critical of the fact that no government authority has so far approached them to formally notify their positions and give them a pat on the back. Ifrah Irshad of Crescent Model Higher Secondary School, who bagged first position in Grade-VIII examination with 746 marks out of 800, told Dawn it's really discouraging that no government authority had come up to honour the position holders. She stressed the PEC must work out overall top positions in Punjab. PEC Chief Executive Officer Capt Naseem Nawaz said the commission did not work out positions at the provincial level because education was a devolved subject. He said the position holders had probably not been approached because the commission was still working on clearing Result Late (RL) cases as well as examining complaints about the results. Punjab School Education Department Secretary Aslam Kamboh said the PEC or the department might give prizes, if it would be able to find a sponsor. "Otherwise, there is no provision for prizes in the commission's budget." Mr Kamboh said the PEC was now supposed to give result cards having security features to each candidate. Last year it had found some sponsors but even then a ceremony could be organised after the summer vacation, he said. He said the respective districts had their budgets and it was up to them whether the district governments honour the position holders or not. As for the possibility of working out positions at the provincial level, the secretary said the results had been declared at the district level and there was no need to work out positions at the Punjab level. He said the school education department had also stopped ranking districts in terms of the PEC examination results because the respective districts had entered into a race of securing better position and "allowed cheating in the papers or ensured that all students must get maximum marks in Nazra oral tests". As many as 1.49 million candidates had appeared in Class-V examination and 1.05 million sat Class-VIII examination. Capt Nawaz said the PEC had to clear 1.5 per cent and 0.5 per cent RL cases of Class-V and VIII candidates, respectively. Similarly, there were various complaints received from different schools and at individual level. He claimed that all Grade-VIII RL cases and complaints had been cleared and expected that Grade-V RL cases and complaints would be resolved by April 15. Still, most complainants believe that it was impossible to mark 17.35 million answer scripts of all candidates in both examinations. Each Class-V candidate had taken six papers and Class-VIII eight papers. He said all objective-type answer scripts were marked through scanning machines, while the open-ended questions were marked by examiners at the Central Marking Halls in respective tehsils. He said the examiners also ticked blocks corresponding to the marks given to the candidates and that too were scanned at scanning machine in Lahore and the complete results were formulated. "The PEC faced problems when a candidate wrote wrong roll number and the scanned machine rejected the answer-scripts carrying wrong roll number as well as the original roll number. In such cases, the commission had verified results from originally marked scripts besides identifying the correct candidate who wrote wrong roll number inadvertently." Besides, he said, various results could not be declared due to non-shifting of their marks to the scan-able sheets, missing answer-sheets and double roll numbers. According to the results statistics, as many as 1.49 million candidates appeared in Grade-V examination. Of them 1.28 million candidates passed at a percentage of 85.98. In Grade-VIII, as many as 1.05 million candidates appeared out of whom 850,278 candidates passed (80 per cent). The PEC had set 25 per cent marks as a benchmark to declare a candidate pass in both examinations. "This pass percentage benchmark was brought down from permissible 33 per cent to 25 per cent to ensure that less number of candidates fail otherwise the dropout ratio might have decreased substantially," said Capt Nawaz. Still, as many as 409,808 candidates were declared fail in both examinations across Punjab.