PESHAWAR: The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government has decided to centralise matriculation and intermediate board examinations and paper setting and marking in the province as part of education reforms.

Chief Minister Mahmood Khan directed the elementary and secondary education department during a recent high-level meeting to develop a mechanism for early implementation of the decision af ter legislation, sources told Dawn.

They said the meeting was called to discuss reforms in eight boards of intermediate and secondary education functioning in the province.

`It was decided in the meeting that the Peshawar education board will be the `mother board`, while the seven others willfunction as its branches,` one of the officials, who was present in the meeting, told Dawn on condition of anonymity.

The official said that under the plans, the powers to set and mark exam papers would with the Peshawar BISE af ter withdrawal from the education boards working in Swat, Malakand, Bannu, Mardan, Dera Ismail Khan, Kohat and Abbottabad.

He also said that the education boards other than Peshawar would work as the board facilitation centres, which could be established even at the district level in the province.

The official said that the documents presented in the meeting revealed that the holding of centralised examinations was meant aiming to have standardised conduct of examination, standardised paper setting and marking, centralised control and to ensure quality and ef ficiency.

The chief minister also ordered the formation of a five-member committee to come up with a mechanism for the holding of centralised board examinations, paper setting and paper marking.

He the chief minister directed the elementary and secondary education depart-ment to send him the names of competent of ficers and educationists to include themin the committee as soon as possible, the of ficial said.

The transportation of examination papers also came under the discussion during the meeting and it was decided that the committee will also work on it to ensure the safe transportation of the papers from the one district to other, the sources said.

They said thatthe chief minister also floated the idea to establish sub-offices of the proposed mother board (Peshawar BISE) at district levels.

Under the plans, officials at sub-offices will receive papers by email from the central board the night before exams and they will immediate print them before dispatching them to examination halls before dawn.

This way, there will be the minimum chancesofpaperleak,saidthe sources,adding that currently, the exam papers were printed and dispatched to far-off destinations days before the exams.

According to the documents produced by the education department in the meeting, the Peshawar BISE was established in 1961, those of Abbottabad, Swat and Bannu in1990, those of Malakand, Kohat and Mardan in 2002 and that of Dera Ismail Khan in 2006.

They revealed that the need for establishing more education boards came in light of the large jurisdiction of Peshawar board, the growing number of government and private sector, the growing number of student enrolments, better workload, and logistic management and public convenience.

The officials insisted that the increasing number of education board brought some negative trends, including promotion of regionalism, a tug of war among boards, `loose` paper marking, deterioration of the quality of exam holding, a lack of standardisation in paper setting and assessment, and corruption.

They said all education boards had been functioningundertheKhyberPakhtunkhwa Boards of Intermediate and Secondary Education Act, 1990, which was promulgated on Dec 4, 1990.

The ofhcials said for declaring the Peshawar BISE as the `mother board` and all others as the board facilitation centres, the provincial government would legislate after the relevant quarters completed homework.