The day after the SLC results came out last year, I was walking home from Sundhara, looking at the Bagmati, thinking about life. At the very end of the Bagmati bridge, about a dozen feet before I turned right into my street, I saw a familiar face.
We started talking. She told me her son had failed the SLC (School Leaving Certificate, 10th grade completion exams). Though passing the SLC does not guarantee a good future (most jobs require at least a twelfth-grade or college degree) failing it means you can not go ahead in your education.
Only 41% of the students that took the SLC exams last year passed, and the exam, also called “the Iron Gate”, is such a big deal that the kids who fail end up feeling like failures. Many students do not re-take the exams. They don’t have the minimum qualification for any job, never finish their high-school degrees, and never go on to higher education. More than 50% of today’s youth go n to these futures.
I felt terrible. This woman works at the kitchen in a big school in Kathmandu to she can send her sons to a much smaller school. The whole day, and especially at Lunch time, the school where she works was probably abuzz with statistics about how many students had passed with Distinction, and how the rest passed in First Division. She, on the other hand, did not even know how many subjects her son had failed in because “our landlord, who looked on the internet said it was four, but his school says it’s just two”. She told me that she didn’t even tell him how disappointed she was because she didn’t want him to do anything stupid. Every year after the SLC results are published, we hear of students who attempt suicide, all because they didn’t pass an exam. <
And then a tear-drop slid down her cheek. She told me about some private institution said they could guarantee pass marks in every subject to that if she paid Rs. 8,000 a month ($85). “But I can't. I feel really bad, because I can't even do this much for my son.” But Rs. 8000 is enough to for food and rent for a month. These institutions that guarantee results are selling people hope for lots of money, for more money than most people can afford
"It's such a big deal for people like you to even recognize me on the street and talk to me."
"It isn't Didi," I said. "We should recognize people like you. You took care of us when we were little ." She was insistent about how my parents must have raised me with the correct values, simply because I was acknowledging her presence.
Close to one year later, I don't know exactly what her son is doing, but I know he did not go back to school. His mother tried to look for opportunities for him to work as a driver, and even open up a small shop, but didn't have enough to invest. The last I knew, she was thinking of sending him abroad to work, at a time when so many people come back in caskets from Qatar every month.
People like her, who work so hard just to make ends meet, should at least have the assurance that their kids can get a decent education, that they don't have to “invest” to give their children a secure future. The size of people's dreams does should not depend on the size of their wallets. They are the reason good public education systems are so important.
Thinking Education Through 