Islamabad, JULY 31: At the Federal Board of Intermediate and Secondary Education, a fresh scandal has surfaced concerning the handling of Higher Secondary School Certificates (HSSC) answer sheets (FBISE).
Board sources claim that fresh answer sheets for some HSSC questions were discovered during a recent scanning procedure. This is a worrying issue, especially because the HSSC annual findings are coming up the next month.
The sources also mentioned that the answer sheets have QR codes on each page, which the IT system used to identify the replacements during processing. There are claims that 62 answer papers were switched out, however this information was not found until much later.
It is important to note that loaders contracted for the task performed the scanning. To hide the problem, multiple loaders were let go when it was identified. To ascertain “whether this was all done to favor a select group of students or it was a human error,” a board official demanded the appropriate investigation.
Syed Junaid Ikhlaq, Joint Secretary of Education, claims that an inquiry has already been started. “I was informed that some loaders, who have since been eliminated, replaced the answer sheets of a few students roughly thirty-two pages during the scanning process,” the man stated.
According to Mr. Ikhlaq, the problem won’t affect the HSSC results because the board discovered it in time. The answer sheets are scanned and then forwarded to paper checkers for assessment prior to the announcement of the final results.
