SWABI, Feb 6: The decision by a local school to withhold examination forms of 78 matric students and later expel them from the school has led to a serious row between the teaching staff and a local jirga and the local union council nazim.

Sources told Dawn on Sunday that the teaching staff of the Government High Sschool Panjpir had withheld exam forms of 19 students of 10th class and 59 of the 9th class. The total number of student in these two classes is over 300.

The reason behind the decision, the teachers said, was that chances of success of these students in the upcoming annual examinations of the Board of Intermediate and Secondary Education Mardan were quite bleak. They said the decision was taken after going through the marks obtained by them in school tests.

The school management, they said, had taken unanimous decision. The headmasters/ principals/ senior staff members of other schools of the area had also told them that that they had withheld the exam forms of weak students of their respective schools and they had followed their example.

The teachers said that withholding of exam forms is a part of educational process and there is also a court verdict on the point which allows the teaching staff of a school to take such decisions in respect of weak students. However, the Jirga and UC Nazim Gohar Khan rejected the decision and demanded that these students should be given a chance to appear in the examinations.

They said after the said decision these students could neither appear as regular students nor as private students in the forthcoming examination and it amounted to discouraging the young generation in their pursuit of knowledge and education.

The Jirga members led by Mr Khan held a meeting with the staff of the school but in the meeting feelings ran even higher and both parties pointed fingers to each other and accusations and counter-accusations widened the gulf between them. Each group made it a matter of ego.

At one point, the sources said, the teaching staff had agreed to allow these students to appear in the examination provided their parents undertook to help them in their preparations for the exams. But the Jirga members rejected this proposal and said that the students should be asked to come to school for preparations during the current month. This proposals, however, was considered by the teachers as their dishonour.

"These students had written abusive words against the teachers and even indulged in aerial firing over the school building", said a teacher on condition of anonymity.

Both the groups, the sources said, stuck to their guns and the Jirga members, in a meeting with the provincial education minister, told him that the teaching of Panjpir School was acting against the policy of the education department not to withhold exam form of any student.

The situation is still tense as none of the parties is ready to comprise on its stand. The Jirga members have demanded permission to these students to appear in the forthcoming exams and transfer of some of the teachers of the school to Malakand or some other far-flung district.

The ball is now in the court of the education minister as the district education officials have already exhausted their energies on the point, the sources said.