Inter pre-medical results: 114 colleges show dismal performance this year
Karachi, Aug 15: The pass percentage of as many as 114 colleges, including 69 government colleges, of the city in the Intermediate science (pre-medical) annual examinations-2009 remained below 30 per cent. The performance of 43 colleges - 29 government-run and 14 private - appeared to be so abysmal that their pass percentage was between 10 and zero.
A cursory look at the statistics of the results shows that not a single student of a large number of government and private colleges and higher secondary schools could get through the examination in A1 or A grade.
More than 15,500 candidates belonging to 192 (123 government-run and 69 private) colleges appeared in the examination conducted by the Board of Intermediate Education Karachi (BIEK). Around 12,650 of the candidates were female and 3,319 male candidates.
Attributing the dismal performance to a shortage of teachers and overcrowding in the colleges' classrooms, officials of the provincial education department and senior professors maintained that one should not expect better performance from government colleges as long as these issues remained unresolved.
When the city's regional director (colleges), Prof Ms Munawwar Shafiq, was asked to comment, she said there were several factors behind the poor performance of government colleges but the major one was a shortage of teachers.
She was, however, reluctant to recount other factors.
President of the Sindh Professors and Lecturers Association, Karachi chapter, Prof Ather Hussain Mirza mentioned a few which included overcrowding of classrooms, insufficient funds for undertaking experiments in laboratories and a decreasing number of academic days.
Giving a rough estimate, he said there was a shortage of around 1,300 to 1,400 teachers in government colleges of the city. Besides, he added, the existing SNE (sanctioned new establishment) of various colleges was approved long ago when the number of students per class used to be quite less than the current average of 120. "Although it is mandatory under the board's calendar that the ratio of students in a class should not be above 1:80, the condition is often overlooked as 120 students are being admitted to first-year classes in the city's government colleges for the last two years," he pointed out.
Prof Mirza observed that owing to the shortage of teachers neither teachers nor students could manage to complete the syllabus in an academic year.
In reply to a question, he said there was a shortage of English, Urdu, Physics and Chemistry teachers, besides those for different commerce subjects.
Describing the government colleges' laboratory funds as insufficient for experiments, he said that since the funds were released by the education department in two instalments (in June and December each year) the amount released in June often got lapsed, for colleges remained unable to invite tenders for chemicals and lab equipment by the end of the financial year.
Endorsing Prof Mirza's views, Karachi SPLA secretary Prof Iftikhar Azmi said there was also an acute shortage of teachers for social sciences, civics and general history in government colleges. He remarked that performance of government college students could not improve until the issue was resolved once and for all.
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