LAHORE: The Board of Intermediate and Secondary Education (BISE) Lahore has intensified its crackdown against cheating during the ongoing matriculation examinations 2026. Controller of Examinations, Tauseef-ur-Rehman, visited several centres across different cities to monitor transparency during the English paper held on Monday. According to Tahir Javed, spokesperson BISE Lahore, during inspections, four candidates were caught red-handed while cheating. The most significant action took place at Government Girls Higher Secondary School, Lalyani (Kasur), where QR
Child Rights in Focus
A five-year-old boy died after falling into an open manhole in the SITE Super Highway area, police said on Monday. The incident occurred in Faqira Goth near Lucky Star Hotel, where the child’s body was recovered from an uncovered manhole. The deceased was identified as Ahsan, son of Naveed, a resident of the same locality. According to police, the child had gone missing on Sunday evening. His family searched extensively but could not trace
LAHORE: A hotel employee has been arrested for allegedly assaulting a seven-year-old girl in the Gulberg area. According to police, the incident occurred when the minor girl was playing with her younger brothers under her mother’s supervision. While playing, the girl wandered into a nearby private hotel, where the accused, identified as Sharif alias Allah Rakha, a hotel employee, allegedly subjected her to sexual abuse. When the girl’s condition deteriorated, her mother inquired about
Islamabad: As the British Council rolls out a global Safeguarding Toolkit, developed with UNICEF’s support, to address emerging digital and behavioural risks, more than 800 schools in Pakistan will be part of this major student protection programme. The initiative comes as school safeguarding faces rapidly evolving, hard-to-detect threats, including peer-on-peer harm, mental health concerns and AI-enabled abuse, according to the British Council. “Since safeguarding challenges increasingly span both online and offline spaces, the Toolkit
KARACHI: Christian organisations and rights groups held demonstrations outside the Karachi Press Club on March 29, expressing concern over the safety of minor girls and their forced marriages and conversions. Groups, including the National Christian Party, Gawahi Mission Trust, and other civil society representatives, organised separate protests. The participants, including women and young girls, carried placards and chanted slogans, demanding protection against forced marriages and alleged forced religious conversions. Leaders of the demonstrations, including
SAHIWAL: As many as three minor girls were allegedly raped in separate incidents across the district in the past 24 hours and the police claimed to have registered cases and arrested two suspects. As per details, in one incident suspect R allegedly assaulted his 13-year-old cousin A in village 170/7-R. According to the police report, R had come to stay as a guest at the residence of the victim and attacked the girl at
BAHAWALPUR: According to a spokesperson for the Bahawalpur district police, FIR No 141/26, registered under section 375-A, on the complaint of Asad Khalil says that two suspects ‘B’ and ‘W’, allegedly abducted a 17-year-old girl ‘L’ at gunpoint when she was alone at her house. The two suspects took the girl to their house, where they were joined by three others — G, A and AM. The five suspects allegedly subjected the girl to
The federal government’s ambitious target to enrol 25,000 out-of-school children in Islamabad within three months will hopefully serve as an example for the rest of the country as we persevere to raise nationwide enrollment rates, which are currently among the lowest in the world. The success of the initiative would echo across the country, which currently has about 20 million out-of-school children. While the enrollment target may appear ambitious, Islamabad enjoys several advantages over
MIRAN SHAH: Unidentified terrorists blew up a government primary school in Chaka Khel village in Bannu district on March 27, completely destroying the building. According to police sources, the blast occurred at Government Primary School Noor Jan in Ghora village when an IED detonated with a powerful explosion. The entire structure was reduced to rubble. According to initial reports, the suspected terrorists were reportedly inside the school premises, preparing a locally-made IED, when the
The credibility of public examinations in Sindh has long been fragile, with cheating common across centres and enforcement often uneven. The government is now introducing a novel system of watermarking examination papers to curb cheating, an intervention that acknowledges the scale of the problem but will ultimately be judged by how firmly it is enforced. The measure is designed to trace any paper leak back to its source. If implemented properly, it could close
Islamabad: The federal capital is witnessing a significant breakthrough in the “No Child Left Behind” initiative as the Ministry of Federal Education and Professional Training begins to see the fruits of its “Carpet Coverage” campaign. Following several days of rigorous field operations across various Union Councils in Islamabad, authorities have successfully identified 3,646 out-of-school children. This data, managed through the Non-Formal Education Management Information System (NFEMIS), highlights a nearly even gender distribution, with 1,862
Human life should never be a commodity. Yet across the country, networks exist that buy and sell newborn babies, exploiting women driven into secrecy and desperation. A recent raid in Sheikham near Sarai Mughal, located in Kasur district of Punjab, uncovered a clinic that allegedly handled deliveries of vulnerable women and sold babies for profit. Arrests have been made and the clinic sealed, but this is, understandably, only a small part of a vast