With another series of SLC Examinations commencing throughout the country, the question of the country’s educational system arises once again. The result will be calculated. The school securing the highest in the board will have additional feature for advertisement. The student with highest rank will have number of scholarships. There will be failures, too. The curriculum will once again be criticised, yet no one will bother to improve them. Like in the past years, guess papers, guides and old books are on high sales. Students are busy with their tuition and coaching classes. However, the scenario in the rural areas is quite different. Students have to move to the headquarters, away from their home and family in order to attend and perhaps pass through the Iron Gate — the SLC.

Observing the situations in the capital, there are plenty of students who fail the SLC examination in one go.

The exams, which are rescheduled, a few months later, heighten the hope of many who fail. If they are not successful in this exam again then they will have to wait for a whole year. But the lucky few who get to pass this exam can join the colleges but will have a hard time catching up with the syllabus.

Schools can be graded in terms of their performance. The A-grade boarding schools have comparatively high fees and are affordable only to the higher middle class families. Since they provide proper facilities they pass out with flying colours.

The B-grade schools’ results vary. The C-grade schools are the ones with poor results. A month back, I tried helping a seventh standard girl from a government school with her syllabus for the final exams. I was shocked to learn that she could not understand English well neither could she solve mathematical problems other than addition and subtraction and had only minimum knowledge of her science.

But what amazed me was that she had been passing the final examinations. The bottomline is that the education system in our country should improve. With the mushrooming of schools and colleges, there is also a need for an improvement in the quality of education.

— Suryalal Parjapati, SLC, Bal Adhyan Boarding High School , Kalikasthan