In a startling revelation, more than 10,000 students, around two percent of the candidates who took the School Leaving Certificate exams this year, failed in all the eight subjects.

No student from some three percent of the 9,187 schools, whose students sat the SLC examination, got through, according to a report submitted by the Office of the Controller of Examinations to the parliamentary subcommittee on education on Friday. The panel had summoned the education secretary, director general of the Department of Education and other chiefs of key offices under the Education Ministry to report on matters related to education.

Most of the students who did not secure pass marks in a single subject come from schools with nil SLC results. Out of the 331 schools facing the humiliating failure, 281 are state-funded while the remaining 50 are private and institutionalised.

As many as 10,277 of the 528,559 students, the total number of candidates, failed to secure 32 per cent score in all the subjects.

“This the highest number of failures ever,” said Anupam Chandra Shrestha, deputy exams controller. “What amazes us is how they qualified for the exams.” He blames liberal promotion system and the scrapping of the send-up test for the poor show.

Through an amendment in the Education Regulations, the Education Ministry in 2012 barred schools from screening students before the school-end assessment. Under the liberal promotion policy, the ministry encourages schools to promote students despite under-achievement.

Bishnu Karki, an education expert, argues that the major reason behind the pathetic performance is the negligence of teachers. “The liberal promotion system calls for remedial support for students in the subjects that they are poor at. However, teachers only promote students without providing individualised care,” he said.

The Education Review Office of the ministry said in its report that some students were unable to write their names properly even in the fifth grade. It also revealed that the educational achievement of students from grades 5 and 8 is below 50 percent, meaning that the students grasp less than 50 percent of what is taught on an average.

The SLC pass percentage rose slightly to 43.92 this year from 41.57 last year after going down continuously for six years.

source: the kathmandu post,21 sept 2014