The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Boards Employees Coordination Council has protested the provincial government’s recent decision to centralize all educational boards and staged a demonstration at the Mardan board.
General Secretary All Pakistan Clerk Association (APCA) and President of Mardan Board, Iftikhar Ali Yousafzai, while speaking at the protest rally, claimed that the move was an assault on the autonomy of the educational boards.
It is to mention here that the KP government had decided last month to centralize matriculation and intermediate board examinations, paper setting, and marking across the province to reform the education sector.
The employees protested the act, claiming that it was an unfair decision made by the provincial administration and that they would not allow the province’s eight educational boards to be merged into the Peshawar board.
Protesters argued that the government should consult stakeholders such as parents, board members, and representatives from private schools before taking any step regarding such matters.
While threatening the government with a province-wide protest, protesters said that if the reforms were unavoidable, the government should establish boards’ offices at the district and tehsil levels.
It is worth noting that, under this decision, the Peshawar Board of Intermediate and Secondary Education will serve as the “mother board,” with the seven others serving as its branches.
