The Sanothimi-based Office of the Controller of the Examination has begun printing question papers for the School Leaving Certificate examinations scheduled to begin from March 31.

The question papers are being printed at Janak Education Materials Centre since Monday amid three-tier security of Nepal Army, Armed Police Force and Nepal Police personnel.

In the past, the government printed SLC question papers in India for security reasons, but after the Cabinet decision on January 17, 2011 SLC question papers are printed by the government-owned Janak Education Material Centre amid tight security.

According to OCE, some officials from the confidential section, including examination controller Khagendra Nepal had visited the JEMC press.

Officials who visited the JEMC press will not be allowed to meet or contact anyone before the question papers are dispatched to districts amid tight security.

OCE said it will take around a month to print question papers and dispatch them to all 75 districts. More than 600,000 students are appearing in the SLC examinations this year.

Since the Ministry of Education has already decided to implement letter grading system in both the general and technical/vocational streams in SLC, question papers will only mention the name of subject, full marks, total time allocated for the exam and questions.

Under the letter grading system, students will be awarded various grades  A+, A, B+, B, C+, C, D, E and N  depending on their performance.

A+ meaning ‘outstanding’ would be given to students scoring between 90 and 100, A to students scoring between 80 and 89, B+ to those scoring between 70 and 79, B to scores between 60 and 69, C+ to scores between 50 and 59, and C to scores between 40 and 49.

Likewise, D would be given to scores between 20 and 39, E to scores between 1 and 19 and N meaning ‘not graded’ would be given to students who remained absent or were expelled.

A+ will be equivalent to 4 GPA, A to 3.6, B+ to 3.2, B to 2.8, C+ to 2.4, C to 2.0, D to 1.6, and E to 0.8.

The letter grading system was implemented in SLC since last year in the technical and vocational stream.

source:the himalayan times,11 feb 2016