Mana Prasad Wagley

What is the use of spending money in boarding schools if students have to attend private tuition classes?

Nepal has been practising the evaluation of school students at the end of their 10 years of education considering it a tool for measuring the so-called quality in school education. Nobody bothers if the students did not do well in other grades. The reason is that the students pass even if they are weak in certain subjects. The weaknesses pile up in such a way that most of the SLC candidates do not have enough background to face the examination challenges. On the other hand, our society has given so much importance to SLC that every student wants to cross this level by any means.

For example, the parents seem more worried than their children for this. That’s why they send their wards to tuition centres or arrange for home tuition if affordable. Among those sending to tuition centres or school initiated tuition classes are also the parents who have enrolled their wards in costly boarding schools. Then what is the use of spending money in boarding schools if their wards should go to private tuition classes? This indicates our quality of education both in public and private schools. There are thousands of tuition centres outside and the tuition classes inside private schools earning millions of rupees each year without paying a single rupee as tax to the government. Even if there is a regulation that such business centres need to register before they operate, 99 per cent of them are operating without it. So the government has no record of them. That is how these tuition and coaching centres are cheating the students. This year alone around 1,000 students were cheated as they were barred from appearing in the SLC exam.

Were these students qualified to appear for SLC or were they school dropouts? Did their parents pay money to tuition centres to help their wards or to make their children appear in SLC in an illegal way? How did the tuition centres have the audacity to assure the students and their parents about their entry to the SLC exam? How many schools join hands with these tuition centres to enter the students in an illegal way and seek bribe for this? Should the tuition centres alone be punished or the schools operators who encouraged the tuition centres? There may be thousands of such related questions.

If one surveys the background of students in this regard, many of them were enrolled in SLC tuition centres not on a regular basis but in the name of getting a chance to appear at the so-called iron-gate exam— SLC because these students were unsuccessful in regular school examinations and remain disqualified. One can see the tuition centre agents rushing to schools immediately after the sent-up test results are published. These tuition centre owners see good business there convincing these poor children that they could help them. Why wait another year if Rs. 20,000 will do? So the children convince their parents to pay the amount to those tuition centres. Parents are always worried about their children and this does not seem bad. Had they been worried about their children in time and monitored their academic activities regularly at home they should not have seen this day when a third party cheated them.

All these indicate that our society puts much emphasis on examination rather than education. In many cases, one can see the rush of parents and relatives and well wishers around the SLC centres to assist the children to pass the examination by preparing answers to the questions and sending to their desks through back doors. Many head-teachers, teachers and invigilators are also caught redhanded doing this at the exam centres. There is a provision in the Education Act that people doing this will be punished with a fine of one lakh rupees or six months’ jail. But who cares? Neither the government has been able to punish those who are caught red-handed nor have the people stopped indulging in this illegal act.

Should one worry about examinations if regular teaching takes place in schools? Should a student worry about exams if regular habit of study were adopted? Should the government worry about SLC if it deployed qualified teachers in each school? Lamenting at the SLC results is not the solution, nor will sending children to the tuition centres do. The parents spend a lot of money on guess papers, guides and tuition each year because they want their children to pass the SLC exam. But 70 per cent of them still fail. Who is accountable for this? The government has spent Rs. 110 million on a group of experts under DANIDA funding, the result of which is yet not out even after a year. Had this money been spent on institutional capacity building of schools and that of the Office of the Controller of Examination, the SLC results could have been better.

Unless the government closely monitors the schools to assess whether the regular teaching job has taken place, whether qualified subject teachers are deployed in each school, whether all the children in all the schools are getting minimum quality standard, and whether weaker students are provided with remedial measures, the problem will never be solved. Equally important is that the parents need to be assured that their children are getting good school education, be it a private or public school. Moreover, the government should show courage to close down all the coaching and tuition centres running illegally in the country or bring them into the national mainstream to assist in the government’s efforts at quality education.

Dr Wagley is professor of Education, TU