Blame Game

No other educational activities in Nepal attract as much public attention as the annual School Leaving Certificate (SLC) Examinations. The SLC examination assumes its importance more for the role it plays in determining the future prospects of the student than for the enormity of its operation.  It is believed that, success in the SLC examination opens for the student's doors of opportunities for higher studies or widens their prospect for employment; failure in this examination greatly narrows their options for self development. Many people therefore take failure in SLC as failure in life.  Unfortunately failure is more common than success in SLC examinations.

Why are we failing is the main question? Is it because the students are not prepared well at home or in school or is it because  the curriculum demand s a lot more from them than they can possibly achieve? Or does the default lies in the examination system? The answer is complex as well as multidimensional.  Along with that another important question is every student gives the exam in same scenario and same educational and examination system, then why some students perform better than other? However rigorous academic analysis of student performance in the SLC exams is not available.

What has gone wrong and where has gone wrong?  After the publication of result last year, huge media coverage, and a greater interest from the entire nation was focused on making this year's result more eye catching with its huge increment and even some planning were also done from both the government and even the school level.  That's why students were expected to fare much better this year but again it went in vain when more than 50% students could not pass their SLC. That means along with the students, the government failed. Hereby the failure of the government means the failure of the nationals.

This year, here is a little more than 2 percent increment over last year's pass rate, 43.92 percent students passed the School Leaving Certificate Board exam. Of the total 394,933 students that appeared under the regular category, 173,436 made it through the exam. As usual, this year's results have also sent education analysts and educated people commenting at the standard of school education. It once again aroused tension about the deteriorating education system. And as usual social media sites are covered with blames and comments. But actually who are to be blamed for it? The teacher who teach those failed students, the students who actually failed the exam, the parents who couldn't create favorable environment for their children or the government which could not guarantee the qualitative examination procedure. Exactly who should be blamed?

This year, before we start blaming to anyone, Department of Education has taken the blame themselves from the government's side for 57% of the student's failure and at the same time it has praised the students and parents role for the increment of two percent of result this year. The government officials are forwarding various reasons for the failure. Some are also saying that these batch students were enrolled during the war period, so their foundation was not good and some are pointing out it as the result of disciplined exam environment. But is that the solution? Should they think about these issues only on the day when the result is published? And taking the blame is not the only solution. Some important steps should also be formulated. If they had previously known that the foundation was already weak then, why didn't they raise this issue earlier and thought about any remedies for them. Were they waiting for the SLC result publication date to share this?

Yes, it's true that whether this poor state of affairs is due to the teachers, the political parties, the government organs or the parents and students themselves, it is the government which has to take care of it and has to take the initiative in any effort to redress the imbalance. But it should be done in time. What's the use of calling the doctor when the patient is already dead? If some visible positive change has to come, efforts should start on war footing without any delay. Though, there are some factors which may be beyond government's control but it should be noticed on time and a qualitative step should be taken by taking the help of different other sources, like if the family backgrounds of the students, whether their other family members are educated or not, the caste system, the financial condition and the interest of individual student cannot be controlled by the government but yes, it can be influenced.

Giving and taking blame doesn't only bring increase in the statistics. We need some strong plan and action on it. The seminars and discussions should not only last for the few days of SLC result. Otherwise, next year also, this ritual is bound to repeat itself as the heat of the moment will die, media will cover less about this issue, things start coming back to normal and next year as usual government will take the blame and it becomes a vicious cycle. But in this cycle millions of students would have already lost their lives and millions would have already plunged their lives as low paid domestic labors in the gulf countries just because they didn't pass the so called 'Iron Gate'. SLC is more than a game of blame.

Published in Republica on 18th June, 2014

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