Where has huge investment in the education sector gone? This year's SLC results have raised this pertinent question as around two-thirds of students from the community schools failed the exam.

Facts and figures speak for themselves. Only 119,198 students out of a total of 326,633 (36.49 percent) got through SLC from the community schools, according to the Office of the Controller of Examination (OCE).

On the contrary, the pass percentage from private and institutional schools is over 84 percent. The success rate in the community schools has dropped by more than 10 percent compared to last year's 46 percent.

Though 77 percent of the examinees were from the community schools, the private sector dominated the result despite its low presence of 23 percent. The poor result registered by the government schools hampered the overall pass percent, which is 46.16 percent—the lowest in the last six years. "This shows that there our education system needs a massive overhauling," said education expert Man Prasad Wagle. The huge investment in community education has been useless, he said.

Interestingly, the SLC success rate went down in the same fiscal year the education budget was increased by 10 percent. Government allocation to the education sector has doubled in just four years reaching Rs 63.91 billion in 2011/12 from Rs 27.06 billion in 2007/08.

According to the Ministry of Education, around 90 percent of the total investment in the education sector goes to school education and over Rs 450 billion has been invested in this sector in the last one decade.

The results show that Salyan has the lowest success rate with just 12.92 percent students passing the 'iron gate'. Out of 3,284 students who appeared in the exam, just 508 got through.

Tehrathum has the second lowest pass rate with just 15.85 percent and Udaypur with 17.65 percent pass rate has become the district with third lowest success rate. According to OCE, six districts have pass rate below 20 percent and 13 districts below 30 percent.

Manang district has got the first position in the list of districts having high success rate with 93.59 percent and Mustang with 87 pass percent is in the second position. However, both the districts had merely 100 students. The OCE record also shows Lalitpur has the 83.63 pass percent, followed by Kathmandu with 82.43, while 80.19 percent students from Bhaktapur have got through the exam.

source: The Kathmandu Post, 18 June 2012