By Manjima Dhakal
Kathmandu, Aug. 29: This year’s Secondary Education Examination (SEE) results were far better than those of the past years as the government granted the schools themselves to evaluate their students after it failed to conduct the board examinations owing to the COVID-19 fears.
The big jump in the ratio of students’ grades seen in the results has raised questions about professional integrity of the teachers.
No one can believe that such a large number of schools can make drastic improvements in their academic development just within a year, but the results showed just that.
Schools across the country sent their students’ grades to the National Examination Board (NEB) after the government decided to cancel the SEE.
The NEB recently published the results after verifying the students’ GPA sent by the schools. The results showed that schools granted higher GPA to their students than their capacity. Due to dramatic progress in SEE results, people have been criticising the teachers and academic institutions for their acts, which appears unethical.
However, some teachers who evaluated the students genuinely and their students secured grades that they deserved are now in pain due to such comment from the public.
This year, 78,109 students secured 3.6 to 4.00 GPA whereas only 17,580 students had secured that GPA in 2075 BS and only 18,037 students had secured that GPA in 2074 BS.
According to the NEB, 9,309 SEE students this year secured 4.0 GPA, but only 106 and 74 students had secured 4 GPA in 2075 BS and 2074 BS respectively.
Prof. Dr. Chandra Mani Poudel, the NEB chair, said the NEB just verified the GPA of the students sent by the schools because the schools were given the authority of final evaluation.
Due to such unbelievably good results, the NEB this year did not make public the grading of the SEE students. The unhealthy competition among schools would surely do no good to the teachers and the students who got higher GPA than their capacity in the long run.
Dr. Bidhya Nath Koirala, an educationist, said, “It will be easy to adjust the result if we take the result as the result of grade nine because grade twelve is the final grade of school education. Though the result cannot affect the market now, a moral question among those engaged in teaching profession has definitely risen.” Koirala said the result showed many teachers could not differentiate professionalism and occupation. And due to such type of teachers, some teachers who are genuine are victimised.
Dr. Basudev Kafle, educationist, said that no miracle had happened in school education in the last one year for such huge improvement in students’ evaluation. “So, the result is unexpected, but we must not harass students with negative comments,” he added.

Kafle asked the students to enroll in higher grade according to their real ability rather than being excited with their unexpected result.
Tika Puri, Chairperson of Private and Boarding School Association Nepal (PABSON), said the result showed that schools and teachers were not responsible and even incapable to evaluate the students.
Educationist Kafle stressed the requirement of a free mechanism in state or local levels to conduct the examinations. He said the result showed the schools cannot evaluate well if they get a chance of final evaluation.
Likewise, Dr. Koirala said compressive examinations is required in grade 10 which will categories students as academic sector manpower and other professions manpower according to their ability and interest.
Chairman Puri said the government had granted the authority to schools to evaluate their own students for SEE due to the pandemic but the situation must not be repeated in coming years. He stated that the SEE examinations must be held in state level and it must be conducted by a government body.