KATHMANDU, Nov 23: The Office of the Controller of Examination (OCE) is planning to expand the alphabetical grading system to include more grades for ranking the performance of students from the next SLC board exam.
Exam Controller Bishnu Bahadur Dware said that over 600,000 students are expected to appear in the SLC board exam scheduled for March 2016. The alphabetical grading system would be revised to include A++, B+ and C+ to break down the previous margin of six grades, according to Dware.Under the current grading system, 90 to 99 percent marks would be ranked 'A+', 80 to 89 'A', 60 to 79 got 'B', 40 to 59 got 'C' and 25 to 39 got 'D' and a score of less than 25 per cent is ranked "E".
The OCE, which had introduced the alphabetical grading to rank students appearing in technical category SLC exams last year, will assign the grades to all SLC examinees with an aim to discourage the psychological pressure on the students.
"The new grading system was welcomed by the guardians and students, many of whom urged the government to do away with the pass and fail system," said Dware.
The students will not be categorized as pass and fail in the alphabetical grading, but the students receiving "E" and "F" grades will be denied promotion until they improve their grades, officials said.
Meanwhile, the OCE has said that there was no shortage of paper to print the answer-sheet for the SLC exams. The exam controller dismissed media reports that said four publishers have been awarded fresh tender to arrange the paper for answer-sheets.
"We are exploring all options to avoid the crisis of papers," claimed Dware.
As many as 10 million answer-sheets are required for the estimated number of SLC examinees.
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