“Citizens need to know that their children are being passed by PEC when they are failing in reality. They are failing to learn, which is what they are being sent to school for,” ITA Programmes Director Baela Raza Jamil said on Monday.
Jamil was speaking at the Idara-i-Taleem-Aagahi’s (ITA) office to discuss a notification issued by the School Education Department on April 16 stating that students of Grade 5 and Grade 8 securing 20 per cent in each subject would be provisionally promoted to the next grade, given that they pass school examinations held in August 2014. She said it was worrying that the pass percentage had been lowered. “What learning levels are being achieved by students at 20 per cent?” she asked.
Jamil said the decision would only add to confusion regarding children’s performance in schools. She said officials at the SED had said that the passing percentage was lowered to allow more students to be promoted to the next grade.
Former Punjab secondary education public instruction director Jamil Najam said there was a need for accountability regarding the decisions made.
Najam said the government was carrying out several interventions to improve the learning of students, but if results were poor despite those there was a need for introspection.
A demand was later made by the Pakistan Coalition for Education, a group of 200 non-government organisations, for a dialogue on the lowering of the passing percentage.
Officials from the School Education Department had been invited to attend the discussion but did not.
Published in The Express Tribune, April 22nd, 2014.