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New education boards vs BISE Peshawar
New education boards stunt Peshawar BISE's growth
| Peshawar, Nov 19: The newly-established educational boards in Frontier
province are hampering the progress of Board of Intermediate and Secondary
Education (BISE) Peshawar owing to their weak financial health, sources
said. "We want to increase fee of paper checkers and examiners to improve
quality of marking and examinations but we cannot translate our wish into
reality. |
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All the eight boards are required to adopt the same fee structure.
Other boards are financially very weak and cannot follow BISE Peshawar,"
officials said.
According to rules, chairmen board committee's decisions
regarding educational boards are approved by the chief minister and all boards
have to adopt uniformed fee structure.
Improved marking requires paying
triple of the present fee to paper-setters and checkers but uniformed fee
structure of all the boards has struck BISE Peshawar.
The BISE Peshawar
was set up in 1961 to deal with the secondary education affairs in the province.
The government set four more educational boards in Abbottabad, Bannu, Swat and
Malakand in 1990 and in Mardan and Kohat in 2001 and Dera Ismail Khan in 2007 to
deal with quantum of students. Except Peshawar, Mardan and Abbottabad others
boards are yet to gain financial stability as they have never received grants
from the government and the fee collected from the students is the only source
of their income.
The educational boards were looked after by governor
till 2005 when a provincial assembly act entrusted it on the chief minister.
Under the act, the chief minister is authorised to select from a panel of public
servants, a person as chairman, secretary or controller of examination.
Previously retired army generals occupied these posts. A former military
governor kept a list of his friends on laptop and used to appoint them whenever
a post became vacant in the boards.
Now, the boards operate under
professors, who unlike their predecessors, know about the integrity, experience,
capacity of the examiners and paper checkers etc.
The process of
scrutiny, setting of question papers and marking of answer papers have improved
and cheating has recorded decrease. Registration of only 100 unfair means (UFM)
cases among 110,000 students in 2008 clearly indicates improvement in the
affairs after taking over of boards by educationists.
Besides generating
their own resources, BISE Peshawar and Kohat also paid Rs10 million each for
setting up of Kohat University. The board has implemented the government's
announcement regarding raise in salaries and cost of stationery, fuel and
electricity etc. But the government doesn't allow hike in fee. On the other hand
the board had no other source of income to pay more to its 229 employees except
fee's raise.
In 2004, the government squeezed Peshawar and Kohat boards
by asking them to pay Rs10 million each for the construction of Kohat University
at the cost of students, who had since been made to pay 40 per cent more in lieu
of admission and others heads.
The BISE Peshawar is unable to construct
10 houses in its Staff Colony hosting 74 staffers despite having desired
amount.
Exchange of papers under which the boards checked the papers for
other boards was started in 2006 to ensure conduct and results of examinations
by all boards simultaneously. The educational boards send their answer papers to
others for marking. Each student attempts six papers and 20,000 candidates means
transaction of 150,000 papers which is not an easy task.
Officials also
believe that this has affected the quality of examinations because it was not
easy to conduct examinations and collect all the papers from examination halls
and then dispatch them to other boards to be collected after marking and
announcing results in three months in the fulfillment of the boards'
calendar.
The BISE Peshawar's dreams to do away with the problem of loose
marking and bringing about uniformity in it couldn't be materialized owing to
those problems.
It has recently increased fee for setting papers and like
to further enhance its quality of paper marking. The decision has irked other
boards that could not raise the fee due to their financial health.
Other
boards have fully computerised records compared to BISE Peshawar which still has
its 50 year manual data in bulky registers. Officials conceded that launching
several measures aiming to improve quality of examinations and other services
had taken a back seat in the wake of existing uniformed rules for all
boards.
Other boards on their part have kept mum on these problems and
things go unnoticed by government. In the process, the students appearing in SSC
and intermediate examinations suffer. Dawn
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Hindko dictionary to be launched today
Peshawar: Gandhara Hindko Board, a literary, cultural and social welfare organisation, will launch a comprehensive
Hindko dictionary on Wednesday (today).
The event will be held in the
Sarhad Chamber of Commerce and Industries (SCCI) building, Grand Trunk (G.T.)
Road, at 3 pm.
SCCI president Muhammad Asif will preside over the
function while NWFP Food Minister Muhammad Shuja Khan will be the chief gust.
The dictionary contains up to 30,000 words and spans 630 pages. It has
been compiled by Prof Dr Elahi Bakhsh Awan, an eminent research scholar,
linguist, poet and writer who did his doctorate in Linguistics from University
of London in 1968 by researching on Hindko phonology. He hails from the Walled
City of Peshawar and now lives in England.
The inclusive Hindko
dictionary signifies the linguistic research conducted by the noted
lexicographer, extending over almost four decades. The dictionary has main
entry, pronunciation, followed by information about the origin of the word and
its grammar status.
The bulky dictionary has been meticulously prepared
after studying Instrumental Linguistics and products.
Known as a calm
researcher among his contemporaries, Dr Awan is the director of Linguistic
Academy of Pakistan-United Kingdom and associate of Institute of Linguists,
London. He has to his credit 30 books and publications, first comprehensive
Hindko dictionary and a book on the linguistic history of Hindko being among
them.
The Hindko dictionary has been published by Gandhara Hindko Board
that has been working for the preservation and promotion of Hindko language and
Hindkowan culture since 1993. The board has so far published 17 Hindko books
besides holding a number of literary activities.
As regular
publications, the organisation brings out a journal "Hindkowan" and a monthly
paper "The Gandhara Voice". Both the publications are popular with the Hindko
readers and are serving as a reference material for all those interested in
knowing different aspects of Hindko language and Hindkowan culture. Daily Times
Student unions to be restored: Babak
Peshawar: Minister for Elementary and Secondary Education Sardar
Hussain Babak on Tuesday said that the provincial government was taking keen
interest in restoration of student unions and in this regard it was in contact
with the federal government.
He was addressing a daylong seminar on
restoration of student unions at a local hotel here on Tuesday. Human Rights
Commission of Pakistan, NWFP Chapter, arranged the seminar. Besides
representatives of different student unions and media persons, Vice Chairperson
of the Commission Musarrat Hillali, Dr Fakharul Islam, Prof Arbab Khan Afridi,
Prof Iqbal Tajik, Azam Khan Afridi and other educationists were also present on
this occasion.
The minister said that restoration of student unions would
strengthen democracy. He said the ANP was a democratic party and it regularly
held party elections. App
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Education News| Updated: 09 Jan, 2009 |
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