Pokhara, April 13

Academic performance of students, where school teachers are actively involved in politics, is disappointing, in Kaski.

When teachers, who are supposed to devote their time to ensure better performance of their students remain busy in various activities of party organisations, the result is students’ low academic performance, as per data maintained at the District Education Office. The office prepared a list of schools based on the performance of the students in their School Leaving Certificate Examinations last year.

Students from as many as 114 state-run schools appeared in last year’s SLC examination in the district. Of them, the result of Saraswoti Tika Secondary School in Bharatpokhari, Laxmi Adarsha Secondary School in Shishuwa, Nabin Secondary School in Gairapatan and Laxmi Secondary School in Arghau was lamentable.

In Nabin Secondary School, in which Nepali Congress-aligned Nepal Teachers’ Union Kaski President Shiromani Lamichhane is the head teacher; and Ram Prasad Pokhrel, the chairperson of the CPN-UML aligned teacher union of the district, is  teacher, 23 of the 78 students appeared in the test were awarded D and E grades.

Gopalmani Lamichhane, the chairperson of CPN-Maoist Center-aligned All Nepal Teachers’ Organisation Kaski, is a secondary level teacher of Laxmi Adarsha Secondary School. Of the 126 examinees, 21 obtained grades D and E in last year’s SLC examination.

Nepal Teachers’ Union Kaski’s former chairperson Bijay Bhandari is the head teacher of Nabha Prabhat Secondary School. Sixteen of the 46 students who appeared for SLC last year obtained D and E grades in 2016.

Similarly, of the 69 examinees who sat for the test last year from Saraswoti Secondary School, 43 were awarded with grades D and E grades. This means more than 62 per cent of the total SLC appeared students obtained these grades.

Similarly, 39 of the 78 students who appeared in the test were awarded grades D and E at Laxmi Secondary School Arghau.

District Education Office revealed this data after the Department of Education distributed incentives to encourage schools to perform better.

Shitala Devi Secondary School of the district was awarded with Rs 200,000 as incentive with the best SLC result across the country last year.

District Deputy Education Officer Govinda Pokhrel said that Rs 100,000 cash incentive was provided targeting schools with poor SLC result as per the directive of the Department of Education.

Students’ performance in mathematics, Nepali and Social Science is extremely poor.

However, Shiromani Lamichhane, head teacher of Nabin Secondary School refuted the charge that the students had poor result due to his involvement in politics. “Many of the students of the batch were not smart and they thought that they would not fail the test due to the grading system,” argued Lamichhane.