The Peshawar High Court (PHC) on Tuesday summoned senior officials of the Peshawar Board of Intermediate and Secondary Education after a ninth-grade student was mistakenly awarded zero marks in a Biology theory examination.
A two-member bench comprising Justice Ijaz Anwar and Justice Babar Sattar heard a petition challenging the student’s result.
The petitioner’s lawyer, Ameen-ur-Rehman Yousafzai, told the court that the ninth-grade student had received zero marks in the theory paper. Although the student’s father informed the bench that the individual case had since been resolved, the court expressed concern about the wider implications of the error.
“Such matters cannot be resolved this way,” Justice Anwar remarked.
The board’s counsel explained that examination papers are assigned computer-generated codes when submitted for marking. He said the student’s paper had inadvertently been assigned an incorrect number, leading to the erroneous result.
Justice Anwar questioned how many other students might have been affected by similar mistakes without having the means to challenge their results in court.
“This child was the son of a lawyer, so the matter came before the court and the mistake was discovered,” he observed.
“How many other students may have suffered in this way? Not everyone can come to court. You are playing with the future of these children,” the judge added.
The court also expressed concern that similar complaints had repeatedly surfaced, with examination boards later attributing incorrect marks to administrative errors.
The petitioner’s counsel told the court that around 1.9 million students had applied for rechecking, with the board charging Rs1,500 for each paper.
The PHC ordered officials to produce the student’s examination paper and summoned the board’s chairman and controller of examinations to appear personally at the next hearing.