About Us Punjab Examination Commission organizes examinationof 5th and 8th grade students, in Punjab Province of Pakistan.

PEC started its functions in 2005 and conducted 5th grade population examination 1st time in the Punjab Province of Pakistan in 2006. Now PEC is a statutory body working under Punjab Examination Commission Act XI of 2010 for improving examination system of elementary education. PEC develops tests, gets them printed for districts. The districts administer and score the test and PEC prepares results for each district about 2-5 millions 5th and 8th grade students both from public and private sector schools every year appear in examination.

We prepare reposts which serve teachers, teacher educators and researcher for improving students learning level at elementary level. The commission consists of 18 members out of which 3 MPAs, 2 educationists and two persons from private schools are nominated by the Government. PEC Registerations To appear in the PEC examination of grade 5 and 8 only the registration is required. No admission form is required later on after the registration. On the basis of registration all students from Government schools, private schools and private candidates are issued roll numbers to appear in the examination. Generally registration starts after summer vacation and all candidates can get registration through prescribed forms available at education offices in their respective districts or can be down loaded from PEC website: www.pec.edu.pk. Registration is free of cost. All districts register their students by using software.

Punjab Examination Commission issues roll numbers and sends to the districts for verification. After verification and changes made by the districts PEC issues final Roll Number Slips to each district which are delivered to schools and private candidates. PEC does not register any student in any case. Registration is done only by district education departments

Key Question :What is the Punjab Examination Commission? Brief Answer: It is an autonomous body set up by the Punjab Government to administer annual examinations to administer annual examination in the Punjab to grade 5 and grade 8. Link to extended response:The Punjab Examination Commission Act 2010 Key Question : What was wrong with the old system? Brief Answer: Analysis of Old exam system indicated that: They were primarily used to make decisions with regard to promotion and relegation. Results were not comparable across districts. They did not adequately represent the curriculum (lacked content validity) Not appropriate for the range of student ability. They used incorrect (arbitrary) marking scales. No central data base of results existe Link to extended response: Ken Vine MISSION REPORT FEB 2006 Key Question : What does the new examination system try and achieve?

Brief Answer: The new examination system will serve as a database to provide advice to a wide variety of stakeholders within the education sector. It will provide advice to the Minister, District superintendents, Curriculum developers, Schools, parents and students. More specifically its objectives include: To make explicit what students at different levels of ability know, can do, and understand (use criterion referenced approach in conjunction with norm referenced approach) To audit the officially prescribed school curriculum To improve teaching and learning generally and within each of the examination subjects To monitor equity of student outcomes To monitor provincial education progress To monitor school performance and progress To monitor student progress over time To monitor the efficiency of service delivery To monitor the effectiveness of service delivery To facilitate national and international comparison of student achievement To provide for the selection of students to proceed to the next class To facilitate judgment about the quality of examination papers and the examination process (construct validity, reliability, item discrimination, match between paper difficulty and cohort ability Link to extended response: Ken Vine MISSION REPORT FEB 2006 Key Question : Who sets the Examination Papers and what format do they take? Brief Answer: A committee of subject specialists representing, teachers, Punjab Text Book Board, and Universities has been appointed and given the responsibility of setting examination papers under the coordination of the Operations Manager of PEC. There are three steps in this process. The first is to develop a Subject design matrix to specify the content and question difficulty to

be included in the examination. The second is to prepare a Pilot examination that is tested using approximately 2000 students. Finally, the annual examination paper is prepared, along with a similar model paper for sharing with schools. For grade 5 each exam paper is 1 hour long and consists of some multiple choice questions and some open response questions Key Question : How is the analysis of the student responses under taken? Is it any different from the traditional mark given to students? Brief Answer: While we do provide a mark for students, we also try and give greater meaning to this mark. The traditional mark system is what is technically referred to as a norm referenced system that gives us a mark and a rank for each student, but tells us very little about what it is the student can do. That is, what outcomes the student has acquired. The new system of analysis attempts to link outcomes to groups of students in what is known as a criterion referenced system. The approach taken is known as Rasch Modeling, and we use Quest software to perform the analysis following the entry of student responses into an electronic database. Link to extended response: Analysis Presentation Lahore References: Adams R.J. & Khoo, S-T. (1996) Quest: The interactive test analysis system, Version 2. Camberwell: ACER. http://www.rasch.org/ Bond and Fox

Key Question : We understand that PEC is introducing a new conceptual framework to support the design of examination papers and the design of marking schemes for the open-ended questions. Brief Answer: Yes, this is so. Traditionally, test developers have used Blooms Taxonomy to encourage the use of questions of different difficulty. While Bloom has served us well and will continue to do so, there is some literature now available that suggests it does not describe students cognitive growth. (For example see Hattie article in the links below). If we ask knowledge or an evaluation question (Blooms terms) we can still expect a variety of qualities of responses from a cohort of students. In an attempt to classify these response qualities and the make explicit the differences between them we have introduced a conceptual framework that has grown out of the work of Piaget, and was developed by Biggs and Collis in 1982 known as the SOLO (Structure of Observed Learning Outcomes) Taxonomy. This conceptual framework has undergone considerable development since 1982, but thus far we are applying the relatively si Key Question : How the grades of A, B, C, D and E determined Brief Answer: We calculate the mean and standard deviation of all the students. We then take a band, 1 standard deviation wide about the mean and students lying in this band are awarded a grade C. A Band one standard deviation wide above the grade C band is the Grade B band. Students above grade B are awarded grade A. In a similar manner, students below Grade C are awarded grades D and E Key Question : What will the student reports look like, and will they include competency statements?

Brief Answer: The student reports will contain personal details of the students, subject marks and grades. It is hoped that in the near future the outcomes that the grades represent will be included on the report. Link to extended response: Sample Student Report Key Question : Who can get information from the PEC and how do they go about getting that data? Brief Answer: A policy on this matter is being developed. This is not a straight forward matter as there are issues of confidentiality involved. However there are a set of standard reports being developed that will automatically be provided to students and parents, schools, district offices and specialist units within the Ministry of Education

PEC Registerations To appear in the PEC examination of grade 5 and 8 only the registration is required. No admission form is required later on after the registration. On the basis of registration all students from Government schools, private schools and private candidates are issued roll numbers to appear in the examination. Generally registration starts after summer vacation and all candidates can get registration through prescribed forms available at education offices in their respective districts or can be down loaded from PEC website: www.pec.edu.pk. Registration is free of cost. All districts register their students by using software.

Punjab Examination Commission issues roll numbers and sends to the districts for verification. After verification and changes made by the districts PEC issues final Roll Number Slips to each district which are delivered to schools and private candidates. PEC does not register any student in any case. Registration is done only by district education departments THE REVIEW OF THE CURRENT GRADE 5 AND 8 EXAMINATION SYSTEM DEVELOPED BY PEC 2.21.1 Administrative Aspects Review of the Grade 5 examination was done and the review team studied the organizational and administrative guidelines developed by Directorate of Public Instruction and discussed their implementation with staff and Executive District Officers. The review team was greatly impressed both by the comprehensiveness of the guidelines and the sedulous manner in which they were implemented in District Offices. In particular, the security arrangements prevented leakage of the papers, ensured that markers could not identify who wrote the scripts they were responsible for marking, and that confidentiality of candidates was maintained at all points in the system. Moreover, the review team applauded the procedure of remarking 10% sample of papers drawn at random to obviate marker bias and reduce marker variability

(UNICEF, 2005a). The review team considered that the main opportunity for leakage of the papers before the examinations related to the arrangements for printing of papers. 80 Private sector printing firms were used for this purpose and each firm was required to lodge a surety bond which they would forfeit in the event of paper leakage. Whilst this is common practice in tendering for printing and publishing services, it provides a passive form of security because the penalty can be invoked only after a security breach has occurred. It is usually considered that more active forms of security such as those routinely provided by government printing bureaux are more appropriate for printing end of- cycle examination papers. However, it must be emphasized that the review team knows of no breach of security in respect of any aspect of the examinations held in February and March. Indeed, one District Officer with 30 years experience in conducting formal examinations in Pakistan commented that, in terms of security and operational efficiency, the most recent examinations were by far the best yet held in the Punjab. Additionally, the review team was impressed with the timeliness of the examination marking and tabulation procedures. In this regard, it should be noted that 1.1 million grade 5 and 0.7 million grade 8 students were examined, the former in six papers and the latter in eight papers. Thus some 12 million examinations scripts were marked and the results tabulated over a period of about six weeks. By any standard of comparison this was a remarkable achievement (UNICEF, 2005a). 2.21.2 Technical Aspects Consequently, the review teams focus quickly moved to a study of the technical aspects of paper setting, establishment of a marking scale and analysis and reporting of results. In this regard, the most obvious concern is that of comparability of paper difficulty and marker stringency between districts. Even though DPI provided model papers and associated marking scales, there remains a serious probability that 81 the level of difficulty of districts papers was uneven and there was a wide variation from district to district in weights applied to questions of similar difficulty. Since there

was no statistical moderation of district papers, no anchoring of questions common to all papers, and no analysis of students responses at individual question level, it is impossible to make judgments about comparability of papers between districts. This is potentially a serious matter because it raises the prospect that students in districts that set hard papers may have been disadvantaged in comparison with those in districts that set easier papers. Moreover, in such circumstances, valid comparisons of average levels of student performance between districts cannot be carried out, although such comparisons are essential for system administrators who have responsibility for monitoring education quality. In the present context, however, these concerns may be misplaced because the published results show that 98% of grade 5 and 96% of grade 8 students passed the examinations, and that there was only a minor degree of variability between districts. These results are based on, and clearly reflect, relaxed pass/fail criteria. For example, in grade 5, a student was deemed to have passed the examination if he passed four of the six papers where the cutting point for a pass was achievement of 33% of the available marks. Additionally, each student was allowed a total of 10 grace marks; that is, up to 10 unearned marks could be added to a candidates earned marks across all papers (UNICEF, 2005b). It is impossible to interpret these results with any degree of clarity. For example, it would be incautious to assume that attaining a total mark of 33% in the grade 5 mathematics examinations indicated satisfactory attainment of the skills, 82 knowledge and understanding specified in the grade 5 curriculum. This is important because grade 6 teachers are entitled to assume that students promoted to grade 6 on the basis of formal provincial examination have achieved the grade 5 curriculum objectives. If grade 6 teachers find that assumptions are not valid for many of their students, they have little choice but to direct their teaching at a curriculum level lower than grade 6. Obviously, this has a repercussive effect on later grades and contributes to a lowering of education quality. 2.21.3 Theoretical Analysis of Examination papers With this in mind, the review team undertook an analysis of the model papers

and marking scales set by DPI. An examination paper in any subject should satisfy many criteria but the most important questions to ask are: Do the model papers represent the curriculum? Is the distribution of question difficulty fair? Is the range of student ability represented in the candidature? Were the weights assigned to various questions fair? For the purpose of answering these questions, the grade 5 mathematics and English papers were closely analyzed, and the outcomes of the analyses were similar. The following discussion focuses on the mathematics paper (UNICEF, 2005b). 2.21.4 Coverage of the Curriculum Turning to the first issue was the model paper representative of the curriculum the questions were classified according to the content domains identified in the curriculum. For example, questions such as represent 0.35 as a fraction were classified under fractions, and questions like how many surfaces are there in a cube? were classified under geometry. Then the time allocation specified in the 83 curriculum for each content domain was compared with total time allocated to mathematics and a distribution constructed showing the proportion of time to be devoted to each content domain. This distribution was then compared with the distribution of questions in the model paper (UNICEF, 2005b). This has been shown as following: Table 1. Comparison of model Mathematics Paper with Curriculum Characteristics Natural Numbers Fractions Unitary Methods Average Geometry Information Handling Total No of Questions Percentage

Percentage in Curriculum 4 13% 15% 11 37% 25% 5 17% 15% 2 7% 8% 6 20% 23% 2 7% 15% 30 100% 100% It is indicated in table 1 that there were four questions in the paper dealing with various aspects of natural numbers, representing 13% of the total number of question, and that in the curriculum, 15% of the total time devoted to mathematics should be spent on that topic. Similarly, there were six questions dealing with geometry, representing 20% of the total number of questions, and that in the curriculum 23% of the total time was allocated to the content domain. In general, it is clear that there is similarity between the two distributions, with the exceptions being in fractions and information handling, the former being over sampled and the latter under sampled in

the model paper (UNICEF, 2005b). With this mind, the following five years programme of development is envisaged: 2006--- examinations using the new methodology be conducted in all subjects for all grades 5 students attending public schools and registered, non- public schools in the Punjab; 2007--- examinations using the new methodology be conducted in all subjects for all grade 5 and grade 8 students attending public schools and registered, non- public schools in the Punjab; 2008--- legislation be drafted and enacted that grants full independent status to the PEC and expands its jurisdiction to cover all formal and externally set and administered school examinations in the Punjab; 2009---PEC assumes responsibility for all formal and externally set and administered school examinations in the Punjab; 2010---PEC market its examination services and products to private education provided in Pakistan. Such services and products may cover the range from special purpose assessments of students progress in a specific grade and/or subjects(s) to the equivalent of O and A level examinations (www.pec.edu.pk) 76 2.19 FEATURES OF EXAMINATION PAPERS BASED ON SOLO TAXONOMY DEVELOPED BY PEC Punjab Examination Commission (PEC) has developed new types of tests for class V in the first phase on the basis of SOLO TAXONOMY in six basic subjects i.e. English, Urdu, Social Studies, Islamiat, Science and Mathematics. These examination papers have following characteristics: The students learning will be assessed not merely on rote learning but on comprehension and higher order skills. The examination papers are based on the curriculum of the particular subject. The questions have been developed keeping in view the competencies of the curricula.

 The examination papers in all subjects will have two parts i.e. part one for MCQs and part two for open ended or constructed response questions. The respondents will have to attempt all questions. The answers will be given on the prescribed space provided on the answer sheet. There will be no negative marking. The result will be based on competencies, not on grade (www.pec.edu.pk). This is the reason that the Government of the Punjab has established Punjab Education Commission so that they may improve the examination process at elementary level. The objectives of the whole process for improving the examination system are as under: Improvement in teaching and learning with respect to each of the examination subject 77 Making clear that at different class level, the students have grasped a comprehension of the concepts Monitoring the efficiency and effectiveness of service delivery. Facilitating the bench marking of students achievement Monitoring equity of student outcomes with reference to rural/urban and male/females Evaluating the existing curricula and textbooks Monitoring the whole education programme Providing information regarding the selection of the students to proceed to the next class Providing ability to monitor students progress over time Facilitating judgments about the quality of examination papers and examination process (UNICEF, 2005a).

Establishment of Boards 1. The Board of Secondary Education Karachi was established on 5th July 1950 renamed as BISE on 8th January 1962. BISE Karachi was bifurcated into two Boards, Board of

Secondary Education Karachi and Board of Intermediate Education Karachi on 1st February 1974. 2. The Board of Secondary Education Lahore was established on 9th August for 1954 and renamed as BISE in 1956. 3. The BISE Multan and Sargodha were established on I3th March 1958. 4. The FBISE was established in 1975. 5. The BISE Bahawalpur and Rawalpindi were established on 20th,October 1977. 6. The BISE Gujranwala was established on 4th October 1982. 7. The BISE Faisalabad was established in 1987. 8. The BISE DG Khan was established in 1988.