Govt’s ‘chosen’ few districts fare poorly

KATHMANDU, JUN 26 -
The government’s ambitious programme aimed at improving school-level education has fared poorly in districts where it is being piloted.

The multi-million dollar School Sector Reform Programme (SSRP), funded mainly by the Asian Development Bank and the World Bank, is being piloted in five districts—one each in all the Development Regions since 2009.

However, despite the huge investment, none of the five districts—Dhankuta, Rasuwa, Kapilvastu, Banke and Dadeldhura—managed to attain the pass percentage equal to the national average in the School Leaving Certificate (SLC) examinations this year. While the national average rate stood at 41.57 percent this year, the average success rate of the five districts is just 25.84 percent, a fall by seven percent as compared to last year.

The five districts’ average pass percentage in 2012 was just 32.54 against the 47.16 percent national average. The rate has continued to slump in the last four years. While the national average was 64.19 percent in 2010 and 55 percent in 2011, the average result of the districts stood at around 46 and 38 percent respectively.

The SLC results in the individual districts in question portray a gloomy picture. This year, Dhankuta’s average rate was 25.2 percent, Rasuwa 39.34 percent, Banke 29.16 percent, Kapilvastu 31.14 percent and Dadeldhura 23.8 percent.

A three years’ evaluation report shows that the pass percent in Banke fell by 14 percent, while Dadeldhura witnessed a 12 percent slump.

The SLC exam success rate has gone down by a staggering 21 percent in Dhankuta, 28 percent in Rasuwa and 17 percent in Kapilvastu.

The estimated cost of the six-year reform programme, which will continue until 2014, stands at US $2,635.

The main objective of the project is to improve school level results by increasing children’s access to quality education. It also plans to improve the success rate of students in community schools that have been faring poorly.

“The consistent fall in the SLC success rate shows that there is a problem in the programme,” education expert Bidhya Nath Koirala said. He blamed the automatic promotion system until grade seven, “lack of responsibility” on the part of the political parties and laxity in monitoring on the part of the Education Ministry for the “failure” of the programme.

However, Education Ministry officials have a different view on this. They claim that as the SSRP has a number of objectives, the poor show in the SLC exams does not mean that it is a total failure. The programme aims to bring about overall reforms in school level education—infrastructure development, teachers’ training, extra curricular activities, availability of reading materials.

“I agree that the SLC results reflect on the programme’s performance, but that is not the only way to gauge the SSRP’s success,” deputy spokesperson at the Ministry Roj Nath Pandey said.

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