Exams in Balochistan: Rampant Cheating amid Rundown Infrastructure

Saad Ullah Baloch

Have a look at fol­low­ing pic­tures; the peo­ple sit­ting on the floor are can­di­dates tak­ing their BA exams in Quet­ta, Balochis­tan.

Around 33000 pri­vate can­di­dates applied for BA exams this year; most of them took their exams in con­di­tions sim­i­lar to the above or worse.

As it can be seen in the pho­tos, there is no prop­er seat­ing facil­i­ty and plan, mobile phones go unchecked and cheat­ing sel­dom attracts seri­ous action. The usu­al action against cheat­ing is just to snatch the cheat­ing mate­r­i­al and let the can­di­date con­tin­ue the exams. Cheat­ing in exams is so com­mon that it has devel­oped into a busi­ness. Low­er staff at the exam­i­na­tion cen­tres has been found to be involved in illic­it­ly help­ing the can­di­dates with cheat­ing mate­r­i­al. The most com­mon way is to dis­trib­ute pho­to­copies of exam­i­na­tion paper’s mate­r­i­al. Some­times it even­tu­al­ly comes down to pay­ing Rs. 150–200 to get the paper done and even­tu­al­ly get a BA degree.

Accord­ing to Dr. Usman Tobal­w­al, a pro­fes­sor of Pak­istan Stud­ies at Uni­ver­si­ty of Balochis­tan, the phe­nom­e­non of cheat­ing has become more com­mon over the last decade. “It has been hap­pen­ing in all exams includ­ing those of matric­u­la­tion, inter­me­di­ate, grad­u­a­tion, and even Mas­ters. I would pri­mar­i­ly hold the edu­ca­tion­al staff respon­si­ble for it as they have shaped it into a busi­ness”, told Dr. Tobal­w­al.

Not just the exam­i­na­tion cen­tre but the whole mark­ing process is bad­ly infest­ed. Around 700,000 exam­i­na­tion papers are checked just by a few dozen peo­ple. An offi­cial at Balochis­tan Uni­ver­si­ty quot­ed a real inci­dent when he a saw a junior clerk in secre­cy branch, the office where papers are marked, check­ing papers of BSc class. The offi­cial revealed “he was mark­ing papers with­out even read­ing and just by mea­sur­ing length of the answers.”

Balochis­tan, the most impov­er­ished province of Pak­istan, suf­fers from the worst kind of con­di­tions both for exam­in­ers and the stu­dents. If can­di­dates for BA exams can­not have a place to sit, the whole bud­getary allo­ca­tions need to be recon­sid­ered. Cur­rent­ly gov­ern­ment of Balochis­tan is annu­al­ly spend­ing 59,277 mil­lion rupees on edu­ca­tion which is only 1.8 per cent of the total bud­get. The Fed­er­al gov­ern­ment must also con­sid­er pro­vid­ing mon­e­tary and insti­tu­tion­al sup­port to help save edu­ca­tion in Balochis­tan.