The above newspaper excerpts are just four of the dozens of stories that fill the newspapers every year around the time when the School Leaving Certificate (SLC) examinations conclude and when the results are made public. The SLC exams, which have been given the sobriquet of ‘iron gate’, are on one hand an attempt to evaluate in three hours of testing the quality level of ten years of schooling, and on the other a way to give encouragement to rote learning as a style of study and instruction. As a consequence, most students who have been passing the examinations leading up to the SLC, fail to cross the iron gate itself.

Archaic examination system

The educational set-up in Nepal looks upon examinations not as a part of the learning process but as a separate, formal activity. Educational expert Dr. Tirtharaj Khaniya says, “We have not sought to define in terms of qualification any educational level attained through an examination.” He claims that our examination system is but an imitation of a system used by the British colonial government in India for selecting some 30 individuals. A perusal of the SLC examination results of the last few years lends credence to Dr. Khaniya’s opinion. In the SLC examinations of 2000, only 31.62 percent of the total of 132,210 examinees managed to pass. The corresponding figures for 2001 were 31.22 percent out of 152,334, and 32.05 percent out of 170,389 for the year 2002. Among those who failed, girl students were more numerous. An analysis of the figures shows that students from ethnic, Dalit and backward communities predominate among the failures. According to deputy controller at the examination control office Jeevan Poudel, most students fail in English, mathematics and science. Spokesman at the Education Ministry Lavaprasad Tripathi says that most students from schools in the remote areas which are run without the levels of staffing supposedly allocated to them fail the examination. According to latest records, some 1,150 teaching posts at such secondary schools remain vacant. Teachers of subjects like mathematics, science and English are simply not available in the schools of the remote areas. Where teachers are supposed to be allocated, connections are used to make do with temporary appointments, and this has led to an erosion of quality, says spokesman Tripathi. While it is definitely weakness on the part of the government to be unable to assign to the schools the kind of teaching staff they need, the tendency to function not on the basis of policy and regulations but through powerful connections has brought about dereliction in the educational system, he adds.

Dr. Durga Pokharel, who takes an interest in the examination system, feels that Nepal’s examination system is an old aberration that tends towards centralisation and that there is nothing to be gained from the SLC exams. She claims that although a good deal of investment has been made in education, aberrations have crept in because this sector has been used as a place for providing employment to political party workers.

The role of examinations

Dr. Khania opines that those concerned have not been able to understand how examinations are in fact a profound study exercise. Examinations constitute in themselves a research, a touchstone for gauging the capabilities of teachers and students. They are also a prime opportunity for doing away with the shortcomings in the system. If the education system is to be reformed there should first be reform in the examination system.
Examinations are thus not just meant for promotion from a particular grade. Their main objective is to make teaching and learning more effective and to evaluate how far the strides envisaged under the curriculum have been achieved. Dr. Khania, who feels that examinations should be put to use to bring about reform in educational policy, says exams should convey a message of what to look for in education. The National Education System plan formulated in 1972 had pointed out the need for education that will produce the basic, trained manpower required for national development.

Although the main reason behind the failure of a maximum number of students in the school certificate examinations is none other than the system itself, the policy and programs adopted in educational management have also played a negative role. School management, framing of question papers, examination of the answer papers, the examinations process, the physical facilities at schools, etc. have also been causal factors behind the low level of success among examinees. Yet other causal factors are the lack of subject teachers at schools, lack of regularity in classes, weak management of the exams and shortage of trained teachers. Deputy director Poudel at the Examination Control Office, who holds that the vexed challenge now is to establish how much teaching is taking place at the schools and how, says, “Only 20 percent teaching takes place at school, but the question papers are prepared at the centre”.

Opining that in schools in other countries, an atmosphere of credibility prevails while in Nepal such is not at all the case, controller at the Examination Control Office Birendra Kumar Singh says: “Teachers should understand the significance of education and examinations, and students also should understand things accordingly.” In order to improve the quality of secondary education, there should be trained teachers in proportion to the number of students and adequate class room space, the curriculum and text books should be improved, and proper availability of physical facilities and educational materials ensured. This may play a prime role in enhancing the rate of passes in school leaving examinations.

Suggestions for improvement

Although the 2001 report of the High Level Task Force on education constituted under the chairmanship of Dr. Nirmal Kumar Pandey suggests the inclusion of a technical/vocational subjects group in secondary level curriculum, not all secondary schools have been able to offer vocational education. At schools that do offer it, the lack of subject teachers means that instruction and learning have not been able to take place properly. Admitting that the rooms are also not running smoothly, the director at the Examination Control Office says: “The need of the day is to prepare question papers in accordance with the curriculum and to run examinations on the basis of the capacity and knowledge of the students. We have felt the need for amending the process of setting question papers.”

The high level National Education

Commission in its report in 1998 offered suggestions such as consolidation of the Examination Control Office, decentralisation of examinations and use of alternative means to bring quality and credibility to the examination system. But these suggestions have not yet been implemented. The suggestions of the report submitted by the High Level Task Force on education to regionalize the school leaving examinations have not been implemented either.
“The Education Ministry is aware that the results of the school leaving examinations are not good, and it is striving to improve matters,” says spokesman Tripathi. “Preparations are being made for decentralisation of the examination system, and a decentralisation system will most likely take effect from the coming year. The government expects this to improve the examination results.”

Teaching examiners how to examine

Conceding that the existing examination system and teaching system have not been able to adopt a practical approach, Controller Singh says, “If results are to be good, then first of all the teaching and learning should be good.” But Dr. Khaniya feels the results have been poor because answer papers are examined by those who do not have proper knowledge about examining papers. Examiners should be given adequate training in the method of examining answer papers, Singh says. The examiner of answer papers sometimes makes mistakes and there is likelihood of negligence if the answer papers are not handled as per marking step.

Dr. Khaniya says there is a tendency among examiners to only look for the answers to the questions asked and not bother about the method and style of the answers. There is no clear policy on how to examine answer papers. According to Deputy Controller Jeevan Poudel, the Examination Control Office is about to refine the directives on answer paper examination. Spokesman Tripathi says the attitude among examiners seems to be ‘if I myself secured only 50 marks, why should I give others any higher marks?’ The marking system is weak, although conference marking has brought about an improvement. Pointing out that it is not enough to attach significance to marking and grading alone, Dr. Khania says, “Marking and grading constitute only reporting, not learning and teaching. Grading does not help in teaching and learning.” Pointing out further that reform is needed in the examination system if there is to be reform in the education system, Dr. Khania says: “Instead of the government taking examinations under its own control, the responsibility should be given to an independent and capable academic entity.” Dr. Pokharel for her part says that education requires the responsible participation of parents and teachers. Parents should keep an active watch on how much teaching takes place in school and how teachers teach their students. But most parents pay only little attention to this. They are more concerned about how their sons and daughters pass, than about their actual teaching. Expressing his view that parents are equally responsible for the weakening of the education and examination systems, spokesman Tripathi says: “Right from the initial grade onwards, parents feel that every student should pass.”

If students are given vocational and technical education, they will not have to remain unemployed even if they fail their examinations, says Dr. Durga Pokharel, adding that, “Vocational education should start from the sixth grade and technical education from grade nine.” The examination system should be on a quarterly basis. A student who misses one examination can thus appear in another. “If Nepalese school education is to grow to the international level, the SLC should be displaced and the 12th grade should be developed as the examination taken at the end of school level education.” Dr. Pokharel says pointing to the high level task force report suggesting the same.

The high level task force report makes the suggestion that school education should be extended to grade 12, with the school-end examinations taken at the end of grade 12 at central level, while then regionalising the current SLC exams. With education up to class 12 as the standard for school education in international usage, demand has arisen for accepting this level as school education in our country also, says Dr. Khania.

“For this, the SLC has to be run at regional level.” To Dr. Pokharel’s way of thinking, the SLC should be done away with and grade 12 taken as the yardstick for school education.
M.D. Kulung is from Education Journalists Group