Govt begins probing SEE results controversy

Published On: June 26, 2018 07:46 AM NPT By: Republica  | @RepublicaNepal


KATHMANDU, June 26: The Ministry of Education, Science and Technology (MoEST) has started investigating a controversy surrounding the results of the Secondary Education Examinations (SEE) published on Saturday.

Some of the students received a different GPA on Saturday than what was published on Sunday. “The SEE result of my ward showed a 3.70 GPA on Saturday, but it was 3.75 on Sunday on the official website of the government,” Tej Prasad Devkota posted on his Facebook wall.

Officials of the National Examinations Board (NEB) made such mistakes in the course of publication of the results of the SEE, taken at the end of Grade 10. They blamed the software system and technical problems .

“We have begun investigation the case to establish the truth,” said Baikuntha Aryal, spokesperson for MoEST. “A panel coordinated by Joint-secretary Tulasi Thapaliya has been formed to look into the matter,” he added. 

The Office of the Controller of Examinations (OCE) under NEB published the SEE results on Saturday after a delay of four hours from the scheduled time of 4 pm. Of the total 463,689 students who appeared in the SEE, held in April, the number of students scoring a GPA from 0.85 to 1.20 is 58,688. This is almost 10 per cent more than the number of students who secured the same GPA level in last year’s SEE. 

There were errors in the system and the OCE has corrected them, said Ambika Prasad Regmi, controller of OCE. “We have submitted the official results to the ministry.”

At a time when the SEE results are deteriorating since the implementation of the letter grading system two years ago, the number of students scoring less in English, Math and Science is increasing annually. 

It is suspected that the SEE results published on Saturday were changed under pressure from donors and the private sector as these results were seen to be inferior to previous years. “This may be the reason for showing better results on Sunday than what were published Saturday,” stakeholders said.

The percentage of students obtaining a GPA of 0.85 to 1.20 stands at 13 percent this year. The number of students scoring the same GPA last year was just 2.53 percent. The number of students securing a GPA from 1.25 to 1.6 has decreased compared to last year. Compared to last year’s 14.49 percent , 7.88 percent students have scored the same GPA this year.

Similarly, students obtaining a GPA of 2.05 to 2.4 is 13.7 percent, which is 7 per cent less than last year.

The government drafted its National Curriculum Framework (NCF) recently and it was widely criticized for removing mathematics from the compulsory group of subjects, even from the Bio Science group. It is reported that maths has been kept as a selective subject for Grade 11 and 12 though it is single track regular school education, instead of the multi-track system in the previous higher secondary education scheme for Grade 11 and 12.

After a large number of students failed in maths, donors and private schools exerted their influence to bring in such a controversial NCF, according to officials at MoEST. The ministry had postponed implementing NCF for a year following the controversy .


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