The Board of Intermediate and Secondary Education (BISE), Lahore, conducts examinations every year and claims to do that in an ‘extremely fair’ and an ‘unbiased’ environment. As someone who sat the recently held intermediate first year examinations, my experience suggests otherwise.
While appearing in examination at BISE’s main examination centre at Lawrence Road, I saw one of the invigilators helping some students cheat. This was despite the CCTV camera that had been installed in the hall where the examination was being held. The invigilator felt no shame in assisting a group of students in full public view.
Talking to them as if they were his friends, he allowed them to chat and get help from the ones around them, while others were not allowed to even move their neck or to shift their eyes.
Watching me fill my answer sheets, the invigilator came to me and bluntly asked me to share my answers with that group of students. I ignored him a few times, but he kept coming back. Had it been possible for him, he would have surely forced me to share my answer sheets with his blue-eyed group.
This was at the main examination centre in Lahore. I could only imagine what would be the situation like in examination centres around the city. I really doubt the situation was any different there.
We just celebrated Pakistan’s 75th anniversary of independence and it saddens me that the state has yet to ensure fair education. The state has miserably failed to provide this fundamental right to the students.
How could the state turn a blind eye to one of the most important problems its students face? How would you expect leaders from this lot of youth which could get through an examination for a few thousand rupees while actually it requires months of study and hard work?
I do not think I am the only one who had to go through this and thousands of students before me have been through such episodes. But it hurts. It really hurts.
YOUSAF BABUR
LAHORE
