There has been a lot of talk about the new grade system that will be used to evaluate students in the annual School Leaving Certificate (SLC) examinations that start today. Many students, it's said, are confused about how they will be graded. This has only added to the anxieties that invariably accompany the exams that are considered the most important in the academic lives of Nepali students. But the grade system is pretty straightforward. In the system being applied for the SLC exams starting this year, the students securing between 90 and 100 marks will get A+; those securing between 80 and 89 marks will get A; B+ is for those getting between 70 and 79 marks; and so on and so forth. What is so complicated about it? Student anxieties thus owe to lack of communication between those designing the new system and its intended beneficiaries. There was so little communication between the two groups that around 610,000 students who will sit for SLC exams this year simply assumed that since the grade system was not explained to them properly, it must be complicated.But the 69,520 students from the 11 districts that were the worst affected by last year's earthquakes have more tangible things to worry about. The local schools and colleges badly damaged, many of them won't be able to sit in proper classrooms during the exams. In many places in these 11 districts, even the temporary tents set up as special arrangement for SLC students have been blown away by storms over the past one week. In any case, their schools closed for months on end, they were badly prepared. Their friends halfway across the country in Tarai plains weren't so affected by the earthquakes. Yet they too had plenty on their young minds. Their schools, too, were shut for most of the year, first due to the agitation of the Madhesh-based parties and then due to the Indian blockade. Their schools closed, they had to rely on private tuitions to prepare for the exams. These are new problems; then there are the old anomalies. As in the past, in most places in rural Nepal there continues to be unhealthy competition to be appointed superintendents and invigilators at designated exam centers. This is because of monetary perks associated with these duties. Many of them supplement this with what they get by 'helping' chosen examinees (preferably with deep pockets) cheat.
Parents wouldn't be so ready to bribe invigilators to help their children pass the exams if they considered SLC just another set of exams in the long academic life of their wards. But for most parents SLC is a serious business. If their children don't get good marks (now grades), they fear they will be blamed for not properly guiding their wards. It's easy for young children to latch on to the anxiety of their parents. The young boys and girls are also under enormous pressure not to let their parents down. All this makes for a perverse obsession, on the part of both parents and children, to ace the exams, at any cost. We believe that the introduction of the grade system will be the first step towards removing the unnecessary hype surrounding SLC exams. A's and B's don't have the sex appeal of hard numbers. But that, really, is the point.
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