Most community schools in the Terai do not conduct exams, answer papers are not marked if tests are held, and students are not given mark sheets even if answers are marked.

Shrawan Kumar Dev and Surendra Kamati : Centre for Investigative Journalism-Nepal

• • Pramodkumar Mahara of Mithila Municipality-2 in Dhanusha district says his daughter is bright in study. “My second grader daughter is very good at studies,” Mahara, who was found in his village, said, adding that a local organization had gifted her a few writing books as encouragement. Pramodkumar, who takes pride in his daughter Kavita studying at Basic Primary School Nakatabhij, has no idea what “good study” means. Nor does he know what marks she has got in individual subjects.

• • Arati Mahato, daughter of Shree Kumari of the same village, also studies in this school. The mother is unaware of the study of her third grader daughter. “My job is to send her to school. Teachers say she’s doing well,” said Shree Kumari.

• • Rameshwar Mandal of Madhepura in Rupani Municipality-4, Saptari, knows only this much about his son’s study: he goes to school and comes back home.  He has no idea about the study of his son Niranjan, who goes to Basic School Chhapaki, Bhathaul, nor the scores he gets in the various subjects.

Equal marks given at Gautari Basic School in Karjanha Municipality, Siraha, without marking the answers of students during the annual examination.

As these instances suggest, most parents of children enrolled in community schools in Province 2 are unable to learn about their state of education and learning outcomes. Mahara, Mahato and Mandal’s cases are representative. Schools do not care to give students’ mark sheets and academic progress reports to their parents–who do not demand them either as many have no knowledge if it exists.

One measure of gauging students’ level of study is the exam score. But in most schools in Madhes, students get no information about their scores in individual subjects, or why they got good or poor grades. Since students are not given the mark sheets, guardians are also kept in the dark about students’ progress in different courses.

From Saptari to Parsa, most of the community schools do not make mark sheets or any sort of progress report available to students. Apart from going to school and engaging in basic teaching-learning, students and teachers in the region are away from other academic activities such as practical instruction, sports and other extracurricular activities, exam, evaluation, feedback and formative instruction. Even crucial tasks like conducting tests and marking test papers are of little value here. And nobody seems to be bothered about this state of schools. Educationist Pramod Raya of Rautahat says, “Examination is the system of gauging the performance of school children. Since exams are conducted in the name only, learning is vanishing from schools.”

Siraha politician Ramkishor Yadav, who takes interest in education, believes that students and guardians will find out about the strengths and weaknesses of children to some extent if community schools make mark sheets available to them. “Like private schools give progress reports to all students, community schools also have to issue them compulsorily. This helps in seeing students learning outcomes very clearly,” he said.

Marks without examining papers

The irregularities are such that most community schools of the region give students marks without examining their test papers. At the Nargho-based Janata Shankar Secondary School in Belhi Chapena Rural Municipality-1 in Saptari, answer sheets of the half-yearly exams conducted last academic session have yet to be evaluated. Without doing that, the school has stated individual marks in a blank paper.

Nepali answer paper of fifth-grader Shrutikumari Khanga at the school does not seem to have been examined. According to the given mark, she has scored 11 in the subject. Dipak Kumar Ram of the same class has got 9 in Nepali. Narendra Mandal and Ranjanakumari Yadav have also got scores without their answers being evaluated. Asked how the marks were assigned without going through the papers, headmaster Narayan Yadav said, “I’ll comment after enquiring with subject teacher.” This statement of the headmaster gives a glimpse of the way the school is run.

The weight for each question is predetermined. The question paper shows the maximum score a right answer can fetch for a question. The examiner is required to state marks against each answer and find the total score in the end. But the answer sheets of community school students that we had a look at got arbitrary marks without scores for individual problems. Take for example the Compulsory English test of ninth grader Sachin Kumar Raya of the Nepal Rastriya Phulkumari Mahato Secondary School at Badaharamal in Karjanha Municipality-2, Siraha. He got 51 straight inside a circle without the examiner checking answers to the questions.

It is unclear why and how all the students of grade 7 at Rajadevi Thokadevi Secondary School got 2 marks in mathematics because the answer papers have not been checked.

Answer books of the annual test conducted at the end of last school year were found to have not been marked in Gautari Basic School, also in Karjanha Municipality. Evidently, all the students of grade 5 at this school got equal, 20, marks in social studies. This was an instance of utter neglect by the school of the examination system that measures students’ level of learning.

At Janata Basic School in Ishwarpur Municipality-3, Sarlahi, marks were assigned haphazardly during the year-end exams last session. Scores have been marked in some papers without testing the answers while the totaling of marks has been incorrect in others. For Garima Kumari Chaudhari, Khushbu Kumari Mahato and Susmita BK of grade two, 14 each has been given in Nepali subject without checking the test papers. The maths score of second grader Bishnu Kumar Yadav of the Ishwarpur-based Chandra Basic School was 20 while an examination of his paper showed only 4.

The exams conducted at the Singyaun-based Janata Primary School in Rajbiraj-12, Saptari, were nominal too. The school completed the formality of exam by asking students to write their name, that of school, their roll number and class on plain paper.

In the schools of this region, not only at the lower level, teachers of higher classes are also found to have been lazy in giving students test and examining their papers. At the Rajbiraj-based Rajodevi Thakodevi Secondary School, all the students of grade 7 were given 2 each in their math’s exam. However, school headmaster Dilip Yadav has no regret about it. “Students did not write well; we did not give good scores,” he said. To him the question on how all students got 2 each even if they did not write correctly had no meaning.

At Sharada Basic School in Jamuni Madhepura of Saptari, students were given 20 marks each without evaluating their test papers. At the Madar-based Lalji Shakuntali Secondary School in Siraha, even the students who did not attempt any questions were found to have got marks.

Retired Rautahat head teacher Ramsinghasan Yadav deems it “unfortunate” of school education to conduct nominal exams and not to check papers. He says that it is essential to conduct proper exams and to inform students about their position in the class. Having retired from the Bhunkhunwa Secondary School in Rautahat after years of service, Yadav shared that he used to check the papers of every student and publish results after discussion among the teachers. “We would inform students about the scores they got. This would lead poor students to work harder,” said the former headmaster.

‘Why check if you can’t fail?’

Why do most schools conduct exams in the name only and do not check the answer books?

We asked this question to headmasters and teachers. Misinterpreting the government’s liberal policy of promoting all students to a higher grade as the “order to pass all”, schools of this region are found to have not been conducting exams, not evaluating answer sheets properly and not providing students and guardians with learning outcome reports or mark sheets. “Since a majority of students fail while assigning marks on the basis of proper evaluation, all are given just pass marks,” said a headmaster in Siraha on condition of anonymity. “We know the level of each student in class. We give marks on that basis too.” He did not conceal the fact that marks were decided even by recalling the face of students, without evaluating their test papers.

Two sides of the answer book : Second grader Bishnukumar Raut of Chandra Basic School in Ishwarpur, Sarlahi, seems to have got 20 marks in math. But how?

In the Laxminarayan Basic School (Grades 1-5) of Siraha, the answer sheets of the half-yearly exam had not been examined until last month. At the Singyaun-based Janata Primary School in Rajbiraj-12, the exam papers of the final test were not examined one month after the students joined an upper grade. Asked how students could be upgraded without assessment, school headmaster Chandra Kanta Yadav posed a counter question: “What’s the point of checking [them]”, when no one could fail?

Headmaster Shatrughna Mahato of Basic School Nakatabhij, Dhanusha, argues that exams are redundant when no one must fail. He says that teachers’ unions are conducting exams only to collect levy. Schools pay such unions for drafting the question papers.

At some schools, it is hard to get the exam paper. Inquired about the test papers, some say they sell old answer books. Headmaster Madhusudan Karna of Chandra Secondary School, Siraha says the school stores exam papers for a maximum of six months. “We sell them thereafter,” Karna said. “How can so much of them be stored? There has to be a godown for that.”

Private schools issue mark sheets, community schools don’t

Most private schools of this region update parents on the level of learning and achievements of children regularly. Mentioning the scores for individual subjects after every exam, they send mark sheets to the guardians of each student. But community schools do not issue score cards. “We have no practice,” headmasters say. Headmaster Chandeshwar Mahato of the Portaha Basic School at Ganeshman Charnath Municipality-7 in Dhanusha said, “We never give mark sheets.”

Mohammad Yejajul, headmaster of Kisan Lower Secondary School at Rajpur Municipality-3 in Rautahat, said they issue mark sheets only when a student seeks transfer to another school. According to him, a student gets his/her score also when one asks for it. “But neither students nor their guardians have demanded mark sheets so far. Therefore, we don’t give them either,” he said.

One of the oldest schools of the country, Chandra Secondary School in Siraha, does not give mark sheets to students and teachers. “So far we have no practice of giving mark sheets. We are mulling over issuing them from the upcoming session,” said headmaster Madhusudan Karna. Teacher Paramendra Yadav of the Madar-based Lalji Shakuntala Secondary School in Siraha agrees with him. “In this area, we have no practice of giving mark sheets to students and their guardians,” he said.

District Education Officers ‘unaware’

When things are happening in a manner challenging the nation’s education system, response of the chiefs of the education development and coordination units (EDCU) (the erstwhile district education officers) of Province 2 is strange. Some remarked that it was useless conducting exams if the papers are not evaluated while others said they had come to know about it for the first time.

“Why conduct exams when answers are not evaluated?” Rautahat EDCU chief Rambinaya Singh said. “Once tests are administered, answers have to be marked and guardians notified about it.”

Parsa EDCU chief Barkhu Rajak said examination is assessing if students have learnt the prescribed course contents. “The learning outcome has to be made public after evaluating exam papers,” he said, he had learnt about the state of educational affairs for the first time.

Saptari chief of the EDCU Dolraj Pande said absence of proper examination and evaluation is a waste of students’ learning outcome. “I hear about this for the first time. I’ll inquire about it,” he added.