ISLAMABAD: The Board of Intermediate and Secondary Education Rawalpindi has released an alarming report showing that Rawalpindi board ninth grade exams yielded a disastrous zero percent success rate across numerous institutions.
According to the official statistics for the Rawalpindi board ninth grade exams, a total of 184 schools recorded a complete failure rate, among which 81 are public-sector institutions. District Rawalpindi ranked first among the worst-performing regions, followed by Attock in second and Chakwal in third place.
Out of 121,739 students who sat for the Rawalpindi board ninth grade exams, only 45,724 managed to pass, bringing the overall passing percentage down to a dismal 37.56 percent. Consequently, the education board has announced strict disciplinary actions against the heads of the failing public schools.
The recurring phenomenon of zero percent results in public-sector educational institutions stems from a deep-rooted systemic crisis affecting Pakistan’s public schooling framework.
A primary driver of this educational failure is severe administrative neglect, characterized by chronic teacher absenteeism, vacant faculty positions in core STEM subjects, and a lack of institutional accountability.
In many rural and peri-urban districts, schools operate with deficient infrastructure, missing basic science laboratories, and outdated learning resources, making effective instruction nearly impossible.
Furthermore, deep socioeconomic disparities heavily impact student attendance and engagement, as impoverished families often struggle to provide foundational learning support at home.
Outdated curriculum delivery models that prioritize rote memorization over conceptual understanding leave students entirely unequipped for standardized board assessments.
Compounding these structural flaws is a systemic breakdown in monitoring and periodic teacher evaluations by district education authorities.
Such massive number of failures rasies concerns not only on the quality of the teaching but also on the lack of interest in the studies from the youth.
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Without robust internal assessments, targeted professional development programs, and strict administrative oversight, underperforming schools continue to drift without corrective intervention, trapping generations of students in cycles of academic failure and administrative indifference.
