The Lahore Board of Intermediate and Secondary Education plans to conduct four annual matriculation and intermediate examinations through a digital system, a major shift for the country’s largest examining body. Chairman Professor Badrul Salam announced the plan at a press conference on examination reforms on Friday.
Speaking to reporters, the chairman said the board had already completed a trial run of digital marking and was now preparing candidates for the transition to digital examinations. The move would take one of Pakistan’s most high-stakes processes, the board examinations that decide the future of millions of students, into a paperless era.
The board has completed its preparations for digital examinations at examination centers and colleges. It first conducted a pilot test involving 500 students, and will now hold a mock test for 3,000 candidates as the next step before wider rollout.
The chairman said the board was actively informing students about the digital examination process and providing training for the online marking of answer sheets. Controller of Examinations Tauseef ur Rehman, State Officer Shehzad-ul-Hassan and Public Relations Officer Tahir Javed also attended the press conference, signaling that the reform has the backing of the board’s top administrative tier.
In a notable data point, Badrul Salam reported a 7 percent improvement in first-year results, saying the increase was not limited to Lahore and had also been observed across Punjab’s educational boards. The improvement suggests that the broader examination reforms already underway are beginning to show in student performance.
For students, the shift to digital examinations means more than a new way of writing papers. Digital systems promise faster and more accurate marking, fewer errors in result compilation, and a paper trail that is harder to manipulate, longstanding concerns in Pakistan’s board examination system.
The transition will not happen overnight. The mock test for 3,000 candidates will serve as the real stress test of the board’s infrastructure, from examination center readiness to examiner training in online marking. Students have been advised to familiarize themselves with the digital examination process as the board moves toward full implementation.
If the Lahore board’s digital experiment succeeds, it could become the template for the other educational boards across Punjab and beyond, marking one of the biggest structural changes in Pakistan’s examination system in decades.
