KARACHI: The Sindh cabinet on Tuesday approved the decision to award grace marks to first-year students of the Board of Intermediate Education Karachi (BIEK) who failed their annual exams, News reported.
Sindh Chief Minister Syed Murad Ali Shah presided over an hours-long cabinet meeting where the cabinet made several key decisions. These included granting grace marks to first-year students of the Karachi educational board, banning all types of plastic shopping bags, approving rules to monitor habitual offenders using electronic devices such as anklets and bracelets, and agreeing to establish a Centre for Excellence on Countering Violent Extremism to tackle issues of violent extremism.
The University & Board (U&D) department reported that the passing percentages for Class XI results in 2024 from the Board of Intermediate Education, Karachi, had sharply declined.
On January 13, 2025, the Sindh Assembly formed a Special Committee and appointed Education Minister Syed Sardar Ali Shah as its head to investigate the decline. The committee then formed a subcommittee, assigning Dr. Sarosh H. Lodi, Vice Chancellor of NED University, to lead a detailed inquiry.
The Sub-Committee recommended granting grace marks to all students—20% in Chemistry and 15% each in Physics and Mathematics. The Chief Minister also directed the implementation of reforms to enhance Board operations and prevent similar issues in the future. Although the Sindh Boards Ordinance of 1972 does not permit grace marks, the caretaker chief minister approved a similar measure in 2023 following an earlier inquiry.
The Chief Minister, expressing displeasure with the educational boards, directed the Chief Secretary to form a committee of upright officers to investigate irregularities across all educational boards in Sindh and report the findings directly to him.
The cabinet emphasized that protecting the environment requires preventing pollution and maintaining ecological balance. It approved amendments to the Sindh Prohibition of Non-degradable Plastic Products Rules, 2014, to ban the manufacturing, sale, and use of all plastic shopping bags—both non-degradable and oxo-degradable—across the province. This ban will take effect sixty days after the cabinet’s approval.
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