Soon after this year’s SLC results were published late on Wednesday, news started filtering in of young girls taking their lives after their ‘failure’ to get through the hallowed ‘Iron Gate’ of Nepal’s educational system. After failing to locate her symbol number in newspapers, Niruta Karki, 16, of Ramechhap district hanged herself to death in early hours of Thursday; Rubina KC, 18, died after consuming poison; five more girls took their lives across the country. We believe the single biggest factor responsible for the loss of seven young, promising lives (and hundreds more who have committed suicide following SLC results in previous years) is the exaggerated importance given to what are nothing more than just another year-ending school exams. Yet, Nepali children are brought up on the belief that getting through SLC unscathed will be among the biggest achievements in their lives.
Far from it. The students who have cleared the Iron Gate soon realize that SLC exams are only the start of a long journey of learning and that there are far-far bigger hurdles in life. In the past years, when the SLC board published the list of top ten scorers in SLC exams, there was an unhealthy competition among private schools to get at least one of their students included in the much-ballyhooed list, and not always through legitimate means. There was widespread reporting on schools bargaining for their placement among the top ten with the government body overseeing SLC examinations. The widely abused system was rightly scrapped in 2005.
But we believe the whole marking system should go, replaced by a grades-based ranking, which is in practice in most of the world. Such a system, we believe, will put less pressure on young minds to get a leg up on their colleagues at all cost. And since different students will excel at different disciplines in their future academic career, and the range of such disciplines cannot be covered by eight subjects in SLC exams, a grades system will also be a fairer measure of a student’s competence.
But more than anything else, the society should collectively work at reducing the exaggerated importance now given to SLC exams. We are thus delighted that the government is set to scrap the school-ending exams at the end of Grade X. Starting 2015, the school-ending exams will be conducted at the end of grade XII, as is the international practice.
But that will not be enough. It is upon the educational establishments--the government and the policy-making level, and also individual schools and teachers--to send out a message that the SLC exam, whenever it is held, is no more than one of many steps towards excellence in academic and professional careers. But the most important responsibility of helping young minds imbibe this message undoubtedly rests with the parents. Psychologists attribute most of the blame for the suicide of young students to their demanding parents. Parents should undoubtedly worry about the future of their children, but this should be manifested in availing better education material and creating a supportive environment at home, not by blowing the importance of SLC exams out of all proportions.
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