Tragedy of Nepalese Education System

  I am aghast at and completely overwhelmed by tragedy at seeing Nepali students ending their lives on account of not making it through the School Leaving Certificate (SLC) exam. Why are so many students failing? Does it have to do with the immense amount of pressure put upon them? Are the exams getting harder? Who is responsible for this? Here comes the point to ponder.

Nepal education system has taken a great stride aftermath the overthrow of the Rana regime in 1951 until the dramatic expansion of education facilities in the country. Quantitatively, Nepal has made impressive progress in basic education in recent decades. Today over ninety percent of children enroll in primary schools and there is virtual gender parity in enrollment. But the quality of public basic education is very poor.Course has not been able to cultivate on full swing for the development of the student.Have you heard of any studious student talking about ideas and creations? Not even once in blue moon? The methods of teaching in most of the schools destroy the Einstein in you and cultivate an average layman in you.That is why; most of the university graduates are flipping meager pages of a bank. Some are(even worse) teaching in the same university and tending to produce their clones for the future. This is the major educational rubbish that we are gradually aching for.

In recent years, the inefficiencies of the results have become blatant to the public eye as drop in the SLC pass percentage by more than twenty five percent in just five years. Really, the SLC exam is the normal phenomenon at the end of school life. It has been given undue importance in our society. So, what does a student do when he/she fails the so-called most important exam of their life. When a person fails the SLC, society either consider them incompetent or lazy. This makes all the student just 'result or marks oriented', the values, knowledge that a student should gain would be immaterial. Deeply rooted in the mind of youngsters since the beginning of their life would be the fact that if they do not pass SLC with good marks, their life would be useless as they can neither make their career nor they get good jobs. Neither the government nor the society is open for the alternatives; making arrangements for those failing SLC to get vocational training. So, youth equate 'failure in SLC' to life-failure and do not hesitate to take the nasty decision of killing themselves.

The government needs to make preparation for providing alternative/vocational education to those who fail in SLC or those who are not interested in school-based education system. The society must change the concept that SLC, and only SLC is necessary for making a career or earning one's bread and butter. Similarly, parents also need to change their constricted view that children not passing SLC are worthless. They should make their children realize that 'success and failure' in life is not guided by their examination results; so that they would be always ready to handle failures efficiently. Schools on the other hand should provide 'value based education' to their students. The holistic approach by students, parents, teachers, schools, society, and government would help to reduce the calamity of youth suicides in the future. So, let us all work in the direction.