SLC results are published every year. But the sad part of it is that the public schools’ performance is always dismal. Some of the public or community schools have zero results in the SLC exams, meaning that the investment made in the public schools is simply a waste of government resources. How could such a dismal situation arise when the Ministry of Education has the entire responsibility of imparting quality education in public schools? The government statement on this situation finally arrived and, astonishingly, it was spewing fire and venom once again on the poor nondescript teachers who are not honest to their job and playing with the future of students who cannot afford the private schools. The statement was a face-saving measure that assured that everything will be all right once the teachers’ retirement age is fixed at 60. Teachers are selected by Teachers Service Commission but headmasters are appointed by the district education office. Here lies the problem. The teachers and headmasters must be made accountable for the poor performance of any public school in the SLC exams. A responsible government is that which makes all public schools far better than any private school. If the public schools start giving good results in exams nobody would like to send their wards to private schools emptying their hard-earned money. In order to raise the standard of the public schools the teachers should be banned from engaging in politics. There must be an effective monitoring mechanism to make sure that all the teachers are in classrooms all the time and that they are imparting their knowledge to their wards. Reports have suggested that those public schools where teachers are over-indulging in politics have produced poor results in the SLC exams. It is not that the teachers in the public or community schools are under-qualified. It is because of their engagement in party politics. They do not care for the students because there is no monitoring mechanism and “carrot and stick” approach.

Guru Tashi Shenga, via e-mail

Space for blogs I would like to draw your attention to the repeated mistakes seen in THT, especially in the message board. The message board is quite popular among youth, students and Facebook users. The messages in THT message board have not been updated. The same messages are carried in every edition. A lot of friends of mine want to get their messages published in the message board section, but they do not get any space but old ones are repeated.  The other problem is with your website. A few months ago THT had a very attractive website. The updated website is not so attractive and reader-friendly. The new website lacks “login” and “blogs” options. Have they been hidden somewhere that a user cannot find them out? I and my colleagues are eager to submit opinions through blogs column. THT should continue the blogs section to attract budding writers to contribute to your website.

Manish Paudel, Lalitpur