SEE results poorer this year

The National Examination Board (NEA) published the results of the Secondary Education Examination (SEE) of the year 2078 BS (2022) last week.

The results showed a sharp decline in students' performance compared to the previous two years when the school themselves had taken exams and given numbers.

This year, only 1.94 per cent of the students graduated with the highest score of 3.6 to 4 GPA while 3.8 per cent of students obtained the highest score in 2019.

The exams were held in person in April/ May after a hiatus of two years due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The two batches of students were promoted through internal evaluation by the respective schools, and thousands of students had scored unusually high marks even in theory subjects. Among the students who cleared the SEE without having to appear for the exams in 2020, as many as 9,010 students received a full GPA of 4.0 but this time only 42 students scored a perfect 4 GPA. This showed how the schools have wrongly marked the performances of their students. Altogether 518,351 students – 260,878 girls and 259,486 boys from 11,615 schools – had registered for the exams, but 22,640 students did not appear for the SEE. Among those who appeared, 112,733 (22.74 ), secured a 2 to 2.4GPA, which qualifies them to graduate to class 11. Similarly, 100,594 students (20.29 ) secured 1.6 to 2.0 GPA, while there were more than 47, 000 students who scored less. Although a new directive was to be enforced from this year that would require students to obtain at least 35 per cent marks in theory and 40 per cent in practice in each subject to graduate to class 11, the NEB annulled the decision at the last moment, given that most schools were facing difficulty in completing the course on time as the classes had begun rather late due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The COVID-19 pandemic has been a good excuse to cover up for the poor performance of the students this year.