Karachi colleges first year admissions

First year admissions yet to gain momentum
Karachi, Aug 23: The process of admissions to first year classes in the city's public sector colleges and higher secondary schools under the Centralised Admissions Policy has so far received a lukewarm response from fresh matriculates.

That the admissions process is moving at a snail's pace is evident from the fact that the CAP committee has received only 30,000 placement forms despite the passage of second deadline on Friday, although the number of students who have passed their matric examinations this year from the Board of Secondary Education Karachi (BSEK) alone is over 107,000.

Besides, there are around 5,000 more aspirants and they include 'O' level students and those students who have passed their examinations from the Sindh Board of Technical Education, Karachi, and other than Karachi boards plus the matriculates of the past year.

The process of admissions to first-year classes in the city's government colleges and higher secondary schools had initially begun on July 23, but since then, only 10,000 placement forms were received till Aug 13 which was earlier fixed as the deadline. The CAP committee extended the deadline for applying for admissions till Aug 20.

However, the response from candidates has been poor even after the expiry of the second deadline (Aug 20) fixed for receiving the placement forms as, according to the director-general (Colleges) Sindh, Prof Nasir Ansar, the number of placement forms received by the CAP committee till Friday was just over 30,000.

Date extended once again
The D-G Colleges, who is also the chairman of the CAP committee, has now once again extended the date for submitting placement forms till Aug 24 so as to provide yet another opportunity to students who have not yet been able to submit their placement forms despite the passage of two deadlines.

He citied the city's poor law and order situation and a delayed issuance of mark-sheets to students by the BSEK as the two main reasons behind receiving just 30,000 placement forms in the past 27 days (from July 23 to Aug 20).

However, he expressed the hope that the process of admissions would now gain momentum as now more and more admission seekers were thronging banks to purchase and submit the placement forms.

Admitting that the process of admissions to the city's government colleges and higher secondary schools had been delayed to a great extent because of the city's poor law and order situation and delayed issuance of mark-sheets by the BSEK, Prof Ansar said that all-out efforts would be made to ensure that it was completed before the commencement of the ensuing academic session scheduled for Sept 6 with the holding of first year classes.

Meanwhile, other academics and a number of senior college teachers who had been associated with the CAP committees in the recent past said that there were other causes responsible for receiving hardly 30 per cent of placement forms in the past 27 days and these included insufficient number of seats available in different faculties such as science (pre-engineering) and computer science; the shortage of teaching staff in the public sector colleges, which they said, was the main cause responsible for fast-deteriorating standards of education in the public sector colleges.

Describing the present Centralised Admissions Policy as "the private sector colleges friendly policy", a senior government college professor said that "it is really a matter of serious concern that in a city where around 80,000 candidates used to apply for admissions to government colleges under the CAP, only 30,000 students have applied for admissions despite the passage of two deadlines".The other reason behind the slow pace of admissions process is that a large number of students living in the Orangi and Qasba Colony areas have not been able to complete the formalities required for submitting the placement forms as both the localities have remained in the grip of tension and fear for a long period. Dawn

Post your comments

Schools, colleges housing thousands of affectees
Peshawar: Whenever some disaster hits the country or crisis grips it especially Khyber Pakhtunkhwa in the shape of catastrophic flash floods or military operations against terrorists, the government always resorts to utilising buildings of schools and colleges as a temporary shelter to the displaced families.

In the absence of the resources the government of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa has been facing numerous disasters or crises like earthquake, military operation against anti-state elements and now the calamity of flash floods. The government has the first and the last option to accommodate the internally displaced persons in the government-run schools' buildings, as they have no other resources to establish alternate shelters for settling the migrants.

In the recent past military operation, about 3million people were displaced from their respective areas in Malakand division, particularly from volatile Swat valley. Majority of the displaced persons were accommodated in schools and colleges buildings in Nowshera, Charsadda, Swabi, Mardan, and Peshawar districts.

For that purpose about all the educational institutions across the province were closed 15 days before the beginning of summer vacation aimed at to provide safe shelter to these families.

Although the government had also set up camps for the IDPs but that were not sufficient. The IDPs in the camps were facing numerous problems like shortage of the drinking water, electricity, bath-rooms and poor arrangements to save them from the scorching heat in the month of June. The tents installed at the camps had not adequate capacity to prevent the people inside from the heat.

The IDPs who had stayed in the buildings of the educational institutions were a bit relaxed as compared to those dwelt in the tented camps because there were already the system of drinking water, electricity, proper rooms, cool shadow of the trees, playgrounds, where children of the IDPs were seen playing.

The summer vacation in the educational institutions at that time was extended for some days for the sake of the IDPs living there. The schools and colleges were reopened when all the IDPs had returned to their native towns. Currently the buildings of the educational institutions are usefully utilized in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa by accommodating the flood affected persons after the devastating record-breaking flash foods hit the Swat, Dir Upper, Dir Lower, Shangla, Charsadda, Nowshera, Peshawar, Buner, Battagram and other parts of the province. Presently, around 65,000 displaced persons are accommodated in around 554 government schools. So far around 30, 000 affected people have taken shelter in the 176 schools in Charsadda, which is the worse affected district. In Nowshera, 22052 displaced persons have taken shelter 162 schools.

The number of the displaced people being accommodated in the 80 schools have reached to 8000. In Swat the number of the affected people taking shelter in the schools are 3000, Mardan 611, in Swabi 752, in Bannu 428, in Dera Ismail Khan 280, in Lakki 400, in Malakand 134, in Shangla 90, in Kohat 66.

Similarly, the 27,000 schools in province are turned to the polling stations during the general elections. It is worth mentioning that a small number of families had also taken shelters in the surviving school building after the disastrous earthquake in 2005 that had severely hit parts of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa the then NWFP and Azad Kashmir areas. The nation

Post your comments

UoP teachers seek pay raise
Peshawar: The Peshawar University Teachers Association (PUTA) has demanded the government and Higher Education Commission (HEC) to implement the decision of 50 per cent increase in the salary of the university teachers.

In a press statement issued here on Sunday, PUTA president Dr Johar Ali said non-implementation of the decision was creating unrest among the teachers.

Dr Ali said staff of the university was hoping the increase in their salary to cope with the ever rising inflation at earliest, but they were not disappointed. Many staffers, who belong to the flood affected areas, have also lost their houses in the recent devastating floods, the statement added.

He demanded the HEC to immediately release the funds to the universities so that salaries of the teachers could be raised. The government has cited lack of funds as an impediment in implementing the decision. Dawn

Post your comments