Kathmandu, November 3:

The Curriculum Development Centre (CDC) is putting in all efforts to prepare specification grids for School Leaving Certificate level examination papers at the earliest.

The government had announced that the SLC papers would from this year contain questions only from the curricula of the tenth grade and not from ninth and 10th grades.

“The CDC will prepare specification grids and model question papers for the SLC examination within the next two weeks and these will be distributed throughout the nation at the earliest,” said Laba Prasad Tripathee, spokes-person at the Education Ministry. He said the recent decision was made based on the recommendation by the subject committees.

While conceding that it was quite late to make an announcement about change in question patterns, with almost half the academic year already gone, Tripathee said it was all because of the political events in the country. “In such a situation it is always difficult to make major decisions,” said Tripathee at an interaction organised by Education Journalist’s Group. “The SLC examination should not be made such a big issue,” he said.

Ramesh Prasad Gautam, the head master of the Padmodaya High School, said the government’s decision on SLC was made just to increase the pass percentage rather than improving examination system.

“It will create confusion among the students,” said Gautam. He also blamed the decision of being biased with the central development region and focussed only on examination and administration. “The Education Ministry has not been able to come out from old pattern of thoughts.”

Karna Bahadur Shahi, general secretary of National Private and Boarding Schools’ Association Nepal (NPABSON), said the decision would relieve the students from “terror of SLC.”

“However, the government’s policy of trying to increase the pass percentage by confining the test papers only to grade 10 curricula is not practical,” he said.

Lakshya Bahadur KC, general secretary of Private and Boarding Schools’ Organisation Nepal (PABSON) said the decision was made very late and hence there is a high chance that this information would not reach all the schools throughout the nation.