Kathmandu, June 17

Higher Secondary Education Board today said Grade XI classes for the new academic year will begin from July 30.

However, adjustment of SLC graduates in existing colleges/higher secondary schools and quality assurance could be a tall order this time around as a large number of students are eligible for enrolment.

The government this year replaced the decades old pass/fail system in SLC examinations with grading system. A total of 588,152 examinees, including 437,326 from regular category and 150,826 from the exempted category, had appeared in the SLC exams.

As per the admission criteria set by HSEB, students with a minimum GPA of 1.6 and certain grades in core subjects are eligible for enrolment in Grade XI. This means that around 480,000 students from the regular and exempted category are eligible for admission in Grade XI.

Currently, there are around 7,400 community and private colleges and higher secondary schools across the country.

In the previous years, less than 50 per cent of the examinees used to pass the SLC exams. Of the total 405,338 examinees, only 192,267 passed the SLC exams last year.

Given the large number of students eligible for admission in plus two colleges, each school has to enrol around 156 students on an average but students might not opt for plus two colleges in rural areas seeking quality education and facilities available in plus two colleges in urban areas.

Chaitanya Sharma, vice chairperson, HSEB, said, “We have sufficient number of schools to adjust SLC graduates but they should be rightly managed.” Recent trends show that students migrate from the rural areas to the cities for higher education.

So, the plus two colleges in urban areas are likely to be flooded with students.

He said the government needs to improve the quality of plus two colleges in the rural areas. Currently, the government has been providing grants for 2,000 teachers and created quotas of 4,000 teachers in plus two colleges.

He said around 150 new plus two colleges are in the process of getting affiliation this academic session.

‘Invest in technical education’

KATHMANDU: Education Secretary Bishwo Prakash Pandit on Friday said that the government’s investment in technical education was not sufficient.

Speaking at an interaction organised by Education Journalists Network, he said, “There are more jobs in the grassroots level.

Hence, we need to produce skilled human resources fit for such jobs. For this we need sufficient investment in technical education.”

One of the objectives of the grading system is to promote employment in the country by providing skills to students who are not academically sound, he added.