Mass Cheating Incident At Al Umer Foundation School

It has been a busy month for me as I am a teacher and students of Matric are having their final board exams. It has been a rule that board of secondary education assign the status of Examination Center to few schools, which can conduct exams. Students had to go to the prescribed center and give exam. No one is allowed to change the center. But I often hear that “It is Pakistan and any thing is possible here”, which now seems quite right to me. From political crisis to judiciary reinstatement, anything or everything can happen here.

As a teacher I always taught my students that always understand not only learn. I used to tell them that once a man went to a saint to acquire knowledge. He served the saint for many years and after that he was on the way back to home in a ship, when a storm came and all passengers were in trouble. Every one on the ship started to pray but he was much more curious about his luggage which carries his books. He had spent years to have knowledge. At that time a wise man said to him that “What is the use of that knowledge which is drowning in water?” .After that he went back to his teacher and learned all things which were written in books and became a great scholar of his time. But when they told me about what is happening in their centers I feel ashamed. Cheating, Source, Outside help, “Pharray”(micro Xerox of notes which is taken inside the examination hall by students) is the burning question.

GEO news has unmasked a private school in Shah Faisal Colony Karachi named Al Umer Foundation School on 26th March. It was the second paper of matric. The GEO video clips show that people were having a picnic at the center and students were chatting away while their friends, teachers and parents were solving their paper. The center wasn’t even prescribed by the controller of examination to conduct board exams. Vigilance team raided the school but all students ran away in the meanwhile some suspicious armed men came inside the school due to which vigilance team had to escape. The official centre designated by the BSEK for the candidates belonging to the Al-Umer Foundation was the Agro Technical School. “The superintendent and the lower staffers of the designated centre transported the exam material including answer copies, questionnaires, and attendance sheets to the Al-Umer Foundation School,” said the inquiry report of the vigilance team. The report discloses that the parents of the 30 candidates, whose Science Group English Compulsory papers were being solved by unauthorized people in collaboration with the school teachers, were also present at the centre.

Matric is the foundation for the youth and after watching clips of this organized crime, no wonder about the standard of the education in the Pakistan. Private academies and foundations are mushrooming here and there. They are extracting exorbitant fee from parents but what kind of service they are providing?

It is also strange that students were being helped by teachers and parents. What lesson they were imparting? They were making their children criminals themselves.