The publication of the 10+2 results last week, marked by a high failure rate, has been something of a deja vu for the country in view of the pass rate being not much different from the past years. Only 52 per cent of the 491,061 students passed, with the remaining 48 per cent students flunking in the examination. The story of the Secondary Education Examination results published one month back was no better. Out of the 464,785 students who appeared, only, 222,472 students (48 per cent) passed in the examination.

The country's education began from the Gurukul traditions, which consisted of studying with the teachers under a tree. Later, in the year 1854, the first Durbar School was opened during the regime of Junga Bahadur in the country, but this was for the ruling Rana family. Slowly, schools began to be opened, first in trickles but later in torments for the commoners as well. Now the country has more than 35,000 schools providing education to 10 million students in the pre-primary, primary, lower secondary, secondary, higher secondary, technical education, higher education and the informal arenas. As a result, the literacy level has gone up to 88.6 per cent in the 15-24 age group and 51 districts have been declared literate out of 77 districts in the country.

The country invests the maximum budget on education at about 4 per cent of the Gross Domestic Product of Rs 48 trillion and 11 per cent of the total yearly budget. In this year's budget, the education sector was allocated Rs 1.96 trillion out of a total budget of Rs 17.93 trillion. Whilst, countries like Norway spend about 6.6 per cent of their GDP, which is one of the highest, there are many countries that spend a lower amount of 3 per cent like neighbouring India.

The cost per student is about Rs 18,000, including formal and informal education, in Nepal. For higher secondary education, the per capita investment is Rs 36,000. It means that there was a loss of 8.5 billion rupees. Similarly, for the secondary education level, the investment is about Rs 27,000 per student. The loss by the failure of 52 per cent students is 6.5 billion rupees. The two put together comes to Rs 15 billion rupees, which is no small amount for a country like Nepal.

If this is the scenario in Nepal what is the corresponding one in neighbouring India? It is much better than in Nepal. For example, in the 10th class of the Central Board of Secondary Examination, only 13 per cent dropped out in the 2018 examination with only 216,082 students failing out of the 1,624,682 students who appeared. In 12th class, it is worse but not that bad as compared to Nepal. Only 17 per cent dropped out in the year 2018 with 188,040 students failing out of the 1,106,772 students. A 10 per cent drop out is considered tolerable. It then shows that even the Indian failure rate is worrying due to it being more than 10 per cent. A failure of 50 per cent as we see in Nepal is simply incredible.

If we cross the Indian ocean and land in Europe, the situation is much better than in India or Nepal. About 10 per cent of the students fail every year, which falls under the tolerable range. For example, in the case of UK, it is said to hover around 13 per cent. In Spain it is still lower.

What are the factors that have led to the failure in the case of India? Two aspects have been identified, which are the individual and the institutional. The individual factors were like students' socio-economic status, parents' education level, the relationship between students and their parents and the mind-set of the community. Pupil-teacher ratio, quality of teaching, school resources, structure and policies were the other contributory factors. Institutional anger, peer comparison, paradox of ambition versus capabilities are also quite significant.

In the case of Europe, it is basically the absenteeism that has been held responsible for the higher rate of failure. But apart from that, for example, in the case of Spain, it is said that the factors can be basically three, and they are related to the educational system, the school and the teacher.

What can be the reasons for Nepal's unusually high failures? The factors applicable to India and the other countries also prevail in the case of Nepal. But one of them is the No

Detention Factor following which no student fails in the lower classes. That even the benches and desks pass in the school examination is a common saying in Nepal. It creates a situation whereby the students become weaker and weaker as they proceed further leading to the ballooning failure rate.

It has been observed that the students fail in subjects like English, Accounts and the Social Sciences in the 10+2 level in Nepal. In the Secondary School Examinations (SSE), Mathematics, English and Science were the corresponding subjects. Thus, English, Mathematics and Science appear to be the biggest stumbling block on the way to success in both the SSE and the 10+2 level.

Countries like Japan, Korea and China have been able to impart education including technical one in their own language. Thailand and Vietnam have also followed this trend.

However, the Japanese have lately realised that English is necessary for global competition. They have been preferring Nepali students for work in Japan because they can communicate in English. So, English cannot be wished out of existence.

One of the ways to reduce the failure rate is that the students, guardians and the school management should make a paradigmatic shift in their thinking. The No detention policy should be scrapped at least from the lower secondary level to increase the pass rate.