PESHAWAR: The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa elementary and secondary education department has decided in principle to introduce a new examination system for fifth and eighth grades in the province.

The system applicable to government and private educational institutions will take effect in the next academic session and in phases, officials in the education department told Dawn.

The officials said after the launch of the initiative, the exam papers would be based on `student learning outcomes` technique and thus, doing away with rote learning.

They said the seven boards of intermediate and secondary education functioning in the province would take the fif th and eighth grade examinations to check whether SLOs mentioned in the curricula were achieved or not.

The officials said the new exam pattern would be formally introduced for fifth graders in the next session who would sit the annual examinations in 2018, while it would be introduced for eighth graders on trial basis in the next two years andthat they would go through the new system thereafter for promotion to the next grade.

Theyinsisted theeducation department, education boards and other stakeholders had had agreed on the new pattern of papers called model papers or standard-based papers.

The officials said the education department had already initiated worl< on the shift from the existing examination system based on rote learning to the new one based on SLOs.

They added that the students of government schools sat examinations of new pattern previous year on trial basis.

The officials said the students of government schools would sit the fifth grade examinations to be held in March on trial basis but this time around, the education department had made the students of private schools, too, part of it.

`The examination held last year and to be held in future is just assessment of the students as we cannot switch to the new system so suddenly,` BISE Peshawar chairman Professor Mohammad Shafi Afridi told Dawn.

He said the model papers consisted of 40 percent multiple choice questions (MCQs), while the rest would be constructed response questions (CRQs) or short questions and essays.

The chairman board said a system had been developed in the boards to check MCQs through the opticalmarks recognition (OMR) machines, making 40 percent of the papers.

He said efforts were underway to further upgrade the exam system and check the entire paper through computerised marking.

`With little involvement of the paper checkers (teachers), there will be little chances of mistakes and injustice with students,` he said.

The board chairman said in the new exam pattern, the education department could do assessment of many aspects of the education system with a single click of the computer.

He said the new system would help the department identify flaws in the education system including the students` failure in different subjects, teachers` and schools` performance, and problems in curricula.

The board chairman said the new pattern of examination could easily assess whether the SLOs mentioned in the curricula were achieved or not.

On the other side, the privatelyowned educational institutions in the province have opposed the initiative.

Owners of the private schools felt the education department would force their teachers into teaching textbooks of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Textbooks Board in their campuses.

However, officials in the education department insisted the private schools didn`t understand the new pattern of papers as materials to be appeared in questions would be follow the curricula and not textbooks.