Is the Ministry listening?

Each year in Nepal, just as in the UK, there are annual school leaving exams. In the UK our GCSE and A Levels pave the way for higher education, and standards have been shown to be improving over the last decade. In Nepal however standards have been falling and in this year's School Leaving Certificate exams only 55% of those tested achieved a pass. This compares with 64% last year and 68% the year previous.

Known across Nepal as "The Iron Gate" the SLC results are also a route exclusively to higher education and there are numerous suicides recorded shortly after the results are published.

This year there has been a clamour of complaint about how poor are the results and the media is full of rationalisations ("it was better policed this year so cheating was not possible!") and implications ("the country is in a mess with a lack of educated youth leading to a grim future") and finally some logical analysis ("it's the education system that needs changing with a low quality of education failing to produce the goods"). Naturally we like and support this final comment and it serves to reinforce NSA's stance and direction especially as we plan our new Academy approach across the next 18 months.

Oh, and by the way, our own community based schools with secondary classes produced an average SLC pass rate of 67% with one of our schools achieving 89%, so are you receiving Dr Awasthi at the Ministry of Education?