Hundreds of students are once again bearing the brunt of irresponsible behaviour of several schools which have found students as easy tools to amass illegal fortune. Several schools and centres in the capital city were illegally enrolling students under false assurance of allowing them to appear for the School Leaving Certificate exams. The students and the parents were in for a shock of their lifetimes when they found out they were being cheated by schools who were yet to acquire board approval to enrol students for SLC. The pain has been multiplied by the fact that the government had done nothing to pre-empt such moves despite facing a similar problem one year ago. This has raised doubts about the mechanism to cross-check, monitor, and verify the performance of schools in the country.

There has never been any doubt that the academic sector has been badly affected by the closure of schools in rural areas, lack of trained teachers, scarcity of textbooks and slow pace of educational projects. The success rate of SLC exams too has been unenviable for several years in a row, except last year, thanks to grace marks. Existing shortcomings of the system aside, cheating has now entered the domain of education anew, an unfortunate development by any means. It will only dilute the standard of education. The private sector has played a significant role in bringing the sector to what it is now, without whom, the picture would have been even bleaker. However, there are some unscrupulous private school owners who do not hesitate to play with the students’ future and violate rules. Cheating students and parents is a portrayal of an inhuman and highly objectionable behaviour on the part of the school-owners.

There have been calls from different quarters for a long time now to reform the education sector, particularly the lower secondary and higher secondary education. The call has been associated with the disparity in the system. Schools in the capital city perform far better than those in the remote areas. It is a different matter that precious little has been done to bridge the existing education gap. One of many tools to ensure quality is to monitor all academic institutions. And the coaching centres are no exception. Had such a mechanism taken hold years ago, it would have avoided the present embarrassment for hundreds of

students and contributed to uplift the overall standard of education. The Ministry of Education and Sports needs to plug these loopholes firmly in the coming days, without which, lofty targets like the Education for All by 2015 will not be realised. But the first thing to do is initiate legal action against those who are tampering with the students’ future.