In the media

The Higher Education Commission (HEC) of Pakistan has asked all the universities of the country to provide a digital or computerised copy of the theses submitted by the students doing M Phil or PhD, so that it can upload all the theses on its website and an automatic check established. According to sources HEC have asked universities managements to warn postgraduate students that plagiarism would result in their degrees being cancelled. More than 5,000 people have been awarded PhD degree from various universities of the country out of which 1,000 have been uploaded on HEC website.

The Sindh Education Minister says that there are 7,700 ghost schools in the province. There is, however, finally some good news regarding this issue: on April 5, 2009 the miscreants who had occupied the Shaheed Zulfikar Ali Bhutto School at Goth Qaim Kharrul of the Dadu district decided to move out. However, arithmetic tells us that if we continue at this rate, it will take us 7,700 more years to eliminate all of them! And that's only in our province - according to our estimations, there are around 25,000 ghost schools in the country.

The 11th Inter-provincial education ministers' meeting has approved a new textbook policy. This includes that the provincial textbook boards should invite book development proposals from all stakeholders concerned, including private publishers. Submitted books would be evaluated and ranked. The Ministry of Education will establish five resource centres in each textbook board for upgrading the capacity of small publishers.

University of Peshawar's Vice Chancellor has been found involved in plagiarism by the Higher Education Commission (HEC) that was constituted to probe into the matter.

Nowadays corruption is not only the focus of the print and electronic media. Most parents and teachers would agree that the public education can play a role in correcting this situation. Students must be made aware of the application of the values and rules.

The Higher Education Commission (HEC) and the Election Commission of Pakistan have locked horns over the verification of fake university degrees held by members of the federal and provincial assemblies, as the scandal spread to qualifications obtained at high school.

As Pakistan's Election Commission began its first hearings into parliamentarians' fake degrees last week some feared the scandal had been pushed out of the limelight by the devastating floods. Nonetheless, the degree debacle is straining the credibility of the country's higher education and election systems.

The Punjab government has amended Punjab Universities' Acts to bring vice-chancellors under scrutiny after identifying unabated misuse of powers by them under the garb of emergency powers. It reported that almost all Punjab universities' vice-chancellors had appointed top officials in universities, including registrars, treasurers and controllers of examinations by giving additional charge to their "favorite" faculty members.

In a 100-page detailed judgement regarding the condition of government schools, Chief Justice of Pakistan (CJP) Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry said that a study – conducted by Basic Education Community Schools (BECS) Project in 2012-2013 through a third party validation team hired by the gover..

Karachi: A list of 34 officers of Sindh Education Department has been forwarded to National Accountability Bureau (NAB). According to the list sent by Education Department, more than 10,000 fake recruitments were done during the former Education Minister’s tenure.