FAISALABAD: Computer teachers in many schools are forced to do ‘date entry job’ of the students sending admissions to the Board of Intermediate and Secondary Education (BISE) which receives millions of rupees as processing fee from the students.

Many teachers complain that they are unable to take regular classes because of the time-consuming data entry task. They say the BISE gets Rs400 from each student under the head of processing fee and expects schoolteachers to do the job without remuneration.

Each teacher, they say, is given the task of filling 30 to 35 entries of each student on the education board website and the schools pay the internet and electricity bills. They say the teachers miss their regular lectures.

Punjab Teachers Union President Hafiz Ghulam Mohyuddin says more than one million students of matriculation and intermediate classes pay Rs400 each to the board as processing fee but there is no proper arrangement to do the data entry job.

Commissioner Asif Iqbal (who is acting BISE chairman) quotes the secretary board as having said that the processing fee is meant for providing to the institutions online services like registration, admission forms, roll number slips and result cards.

“The fee is being used to acquire the internet services, web hosting, online server facility, online remote spacing from the service providers for secure and online transactions and to develop, maintain and execute the software and modules to provide these facilities,” he says.

The Board doesn’t bind any person to submit the online data and it’s the responsibility of the school/college administration to assign the duties to any appropriate person. The job is mostly done by the non-teaching (clerical) staff, he says.

According to the previous practice, he says, the data and particulars of the candidates were fed by the board officials and there were chances of wrong entries. The online submission of data of each student has eliminated the chances of wrong entries as the institutions are fully authorised to rectify a wrong entry, he says.

The Board secretary and controller of examination could not be contacted.

Published in Dawn, September 11th, 2018