Himalayan News Service

Kathmandu, April 24:

Educationists today proposed merger of the present School Leaving Certificate Board and the Higher Secondary Education Board (HSEB) to form a body which would oversee the implementation of single school exit examination. This, they said, would bring higher secondary education within the responsibility of the government and also fulfil the education policy of 12 years’ schooling. They also proposed conduction of SLC at the regional level.

“By doing so, the SLC examination would retain its credibility along with fulfilling the education

policy accreditation of 12 years’ schooling and the government too would be equally responsible for higher secondary education after it comes under the schooling system,” educationists Dr Mana Prasad Wagle and Dr Shreeram Prasad Lamichhane said presenting a paper ‘A road map for HSEB’s future journey’ at an interaction on Higher Secondary Education in the Present Context organised by the Society for Educational Concern (SEC) and the HSEB. Another educationist Dr Kedar Nath Shrestha outlined the need to amend the Education Act define school education as beginning from grade one to the twelfth grade.

“There is a need to upgrade the existing community secondary schools to higher

secondary schools, and for it policies need to be amended because the fully government funded secondary schools normally would not want to upgrade to higher secondary schools to invite new financial and staffing problems,” said Shrestha. Laba Prasad Tripathee, spokesperson at Education Ministry said that the government is reviewing the possibility of integrating the curriculum of certificate level and higher secondary education so as to bridge the gap between the students from remote and urban areas.

A paper presented by Narayan Prasad Koirala and Dr Govind Prasad Acharya, said, while the SAARC nations bear the huge share of investment in the higher education, in Nepal the government’s investment is very low. Only 33 per cent of the total resource for higher education is provided by the government while the institutions themselves manage the remaining 67 per cent of the resource. Dhal Bahadur Khadka, chief at Curriculum and Training

Division, HSEB, said the government’s investment on higher education is very nominal and that the higher secondary education still does not have the government teacher quota. The government spends only 0.3 per cent to 0.7 per cent of the total budget in higher education, it was informed.