Kathmandu, March 23

All the provinces will have separate sets of question papers for six compulsory subjects of Secondary Education Examination, which is beginning tomorrow. As many as 475,003 students from across the country are taking SEE this year.

National Examination Board is the official body for conducting SEE. As per the board, though compulsory subjects will have different sets of question papers for provinces, the question papers of first and second optional subjects, technical subjects and Sanskrit will be the same in all provinces.

Although the Education Act (ninth amendment) has given the responsibility of conducting Secondary Education Examination to the provinces, NEB is conducting the exam on its own this year too.

As per the Education Act, local levels are responsible for conducting examinations up to Grade VIII, provinces for conducting Grade X exams, and NEB for conducting Grade XI and XII exams.

NEB took the sole responsibility of preparing question papers, fixing examination centres, and publishing results of SEE. The provinces, however, have been given the responsibility of making necessary security arrangements outside the examination centres.

Examination Controller of National Education Board Bishnu Prasad Adhikari said since the provinces had not developed required mechanism and structures to conduct SEE exams, NEB had to take the responsibility.

This year the number of girl students taking SEE is slightly higher than the number of boys appearing SEE exams. The data, however, also shows the number of girls appearing SEE from community school is way higher than the girls taking exams from private schools. If we go by the wide spread belief that private schools are providing better education than community schools, this is the clear indication that people are still hesitant to spend more on educating girl child. Parents have undoubtedly started sending their daughters to school, but education of male child is given first priority in the country.

A total of 304,196 students are appearing SEE from community schools while 170,807 students are from private schools. The number of girl students from private schools is significantly low in comparison to the number of boys taking SEE from private schools.

The number of girls taking SEE from community school is 181,807 which is 53.44 per cent of the total students of community schools. While, the number of girls appearing SEE from private schools is only 56,751 which makes 33.22 per cent of the total students from private schools.

A total of 238,558 girls and 236,445 boys are appearing SEE this year.