Examination Board - A Commitment to Quality Education in Pakistan
First Board in Pakistan to Make National Curriculum Syllabuses
Available to Urdu Speaking Teachers

Established in 2003 under an Ordinance passed by the Government of Pakistan, AKU Examination Board (AKU-EB) is set to conduct its first examination of Secondary School Certificate (SSC) in April 2006, after affiliating 90 schools from all the provinces in Pakistan.

AKU-EB reflects the University's ongoing commitment to improving the standard of education in Pakistan, derived from AKU's mission of developing quality human resources in the region.

The idea of creating an examining body goes as far back as 1995, when 16 private schools in Pakistan wrote to the University to express their concern about deteriorating standards of secondary education and identified the current examination system as a major cause. They further requested AKU, being an established educational institution of high repute in the country, to set up an examination board for conducting the matric examination and awarding the SSC certificates. Subsequent consultations with schools, students, educationists and policymakers, confirmed that a critical weakness of the existing education system has been its examination methodology which is designed primarily as a test of memory based on a single textbook. Combined with the need for high scores to pursue advanced education, this mode of examination promotes rote learning in schools at the expense of comprehension of concepts and application of knowledge. An alternative to this is the UK-based Cambridge 'O' and 'A' level system that has achieved rapid growth due to ineffectiveness of the country's existing examination system. Although these examinations are generally reliable, they are very expensive and are based on a foreign curriculum.

To consider the introduction of an alternative examination system, the University's Board of Trustees appointed a task force to assess the feasibility of such initiative. The task force included representation from schools using existing public board examinations, as well as national consultants who provided insights into government policies and national curricula. In 1999, the group recommended to the Board of Trustees the creation of an examination service as a function of the University, with its main objective being the improvement of quality in education in schools throughout Pakistan. In 2000, the Board of Trustees approved the recommendation of the task force, subject to approval of the Government of Pakistan, and emphasized the principal aim as being to offer high quality public examinations using modern methods of assessment to test achievement within the national curriculum so as to have a significant impact on the quality of education. Through a Government of Pakistan ordinance, issued in 2002, AKU-EB was granted permission to operate.

The Board was initiated with resources from AKU and USAID. Under the agreement with the Government of Pakistan to support the government's education sector reforms, USAID agreed to support, partially, the establishment of the Examination Board. After the initial five years, it is expected that AKU-EB will be financially self-sufficient.

The Board has the general objective of designing and offering high quality public examinations in English and Urdu based on the national curriculum for secondary and higher secondary education. It will also arrange for training of teachers, and for appropriate learning materials to prepare teachers and students for the new examination system. It is intended to serve as a model of internationally recognised good practice in order to enhance the country's capacity for educational assessment and tests, and therefore to improve the quality of education in schools, and through them, the quality of education in the national universities. From its first examination onwards, AKU-EB intends to serve a cross section of English and Urdu medium schools. AKU-EB is the first board in Pakistan to make the national curriculum syllabuses available to Urdu speaking teachers. Syllabi for all subjects are derived from the government-approved national curriculum.

Affiliation with AKU-EB is transparent and open for all the private school systems in Pakistan. In affiliating schools from the private sectors, the emphasis is on school systems with well established in-service training facilities for teachers. The Board received more than 200 applications for affiliation from various school systems for its first examination of SSC schedule in April 2006. From these, over 100 schools in all four provinces were given affiliation.

AKU-EB was envisaged as a small undertaking which would be able to serve as a role model for other examination boards. The Board focuses on a targeted number of 27,000 candidates after a period of five years, which is just two per cent of the countrywide total of students sitting the matriculate examination annually.

The Board will use the system of e-marking for assessing the answer scripts of candidates in the examinations. This marking system will be a new addition in the history of public examinations in the region, eliminating the possibilities of tampering with candidates' results. The Board is already collaborating with the Federal Board of Intermediate and Secondary Education, and examination boards from across the country are approaching it for training to improve their own examination processes.