KARACHI CHRONICLE: Caught cheating

It is no news when boys and girls are caught cheating in exams. But when a college notorious for cheating is found clean, you want to add 'believe it or not' to the news because it is incredible. So, it is clear, if this bad practice can be eradicated from one exam centre it can be eliminated from all of them.
The Board of Intermediate Education Karachi (BIEK) has set up a special vigilance team which arrives unannounced at any exam centre. It is empowered to take immediate action against any student caught cheating, as well as reprimand invigilators if cheating took place in their center.
Last week the vigilance team caught two boys cheating during the Botany Pre-Medical Paper-I at the Sirajuddaullah Government College No I in Federal-B Area. Their next stop was Riaz Government Girls College Liaquatabad No 10. Additional Commissioner Rubina Asif and two female professors in the team thoroughly checked the exam rooms for nearly an hour, but could not find any evidence of cheating in the college.
The reason for going over the exam rooms with a fine tooth comb was the unbelievable absence of cheating in this particular college. It is a college notorious for cheating. The BIEK team was surprised, but the center's superintendent Professor Najma Asif was not surprised. She had personally checked every girl sitting for the exam.
If all it takes to eliminate cheating from exam centres is the determination of the superintendents to honestly do their duty, this menace can disappear in the blinking of an eyelid. As always, in any kind of corruption it is the lack of integrity and self-respect of those at the helm of affairs which perpetuates bad practices.
Students caught cheating in exams are punished, but no one cares to find the root cause of cheating. It is certainly not because students are dishonest by nature. In most cases they have been compelled to cheat. The only visible cause of cheating which is pointed out by the BIEK and its Unfair Means Committee is that the student does not study, gets tutorials and reports written by clever students who do it for money, does not attend classes preferring to go off to play snooker or just idle around the campus. In an exam the student depends on the help of fellow students in his pay. However, this kind of cheat is just one type.
Another type is a thug. A student, most often a member of the student's wing of a political party, spends the school or college year indulging in politics rather than attending classes. He sits for the exam with a gun on the desk, a threat to the invigilator. The scared invigilator even acts like a bodyguard for the thug student, warning him to hide his weapon on the approach of the vigilance team. This kind of gundaism is most common among students taking the pre-Medical exams.
Yet another type is the deprived student. This type is created by greedy teachers. In most institutions a teacher does not adequately cover a subject in class; he or she says the full information or grounding will be given in tuition class. A student whose parents can barely afford to pay school or college fees cannot afford the cost of tuitions. Such a student then learns on his own sometimes borrowing notes, sometimes begging tuition-taking students to help him. If he is unlucky to get help then he cheats in the exam.
The tuition business has got out of control. I was shocked when my housemaid said she paid for the tuition of her two daughters, both in Class-II. Tuition is the teacher's real income, it seems, because private and government schools do not pay them well. In this affair it is hard to tell one victim, the student, apart from the other victim, the poorly-paid teacher.
Cheating is also a business of some educated, jobless graduates. They sit the exam for a student for a hefty fee. If he is caught cheating, then he and the absentee student both are punished, the student especially, because he will not be allowed to sit the exam again and his education goes down the drain.
The BIEK vigilance team and superintendents or invigilators of integrity cannot eradicate the menace completely if they only do it at the exam centres. There are not many the likes of Prof. Najma Asif superintendent who was appointed in March to supervise exams at the notorious Riaz Government Girls College Liaquatabad No 10.
Education was high on the manifesto of the PML-N and PTI. The PTI offered no programme. Shahbaz Sharif boasted about his computer gift to students. The real way to solve the education deficit is to pay teachers a decent salary. It is also necessary to empower heads of government schools and colleges to punish inefficient teachers, absentee teachers and those who exploit students through tuitions. Will the politicians deliver?