SEE Performance, 2019

This article was originally published by Ayushma Maharjan for Eco-nity.

The Secondary Education Examination (SEE) results of 2019, has once again demonstrated the poor performance of public schools when compared to its private counterparts. A massive divide between the quality of education can be depicted by the SEE statistics, where the private schools have clearly outperformed the public schools. 

Only 4.3 percent of students who appeared for SEE examinations from public schools were able to achieve grade A or A+, compared to 40.83 percent of students from private schools. Moreover, 46,659 students (14.34%) from public schools secured the lowest grades, whereas only 1,611 students (1.19%) from private school obtained such low grades. Such poor performance of the public schools poses a great threat to the future of Nepal. Admittedly, there were almost three-fold more students appearing for these exams from public schools as compared to private ones. 

Public education, despite being one of the largest sectors of the country in terms of annual budgetary allocation, has not been able to yield desirable results. There is thus an alarming need to examine and revisit our public education system and devise a better structure that does justice to the amount of resources being spent on it.It is high time for the government to perform an outcome-based analysis of the current system of public education and identify alternative and effective means to ensure good quality outcomes.