SEE examinations: Not required, now or later

The government has announced that a decision has not yet been taken about when the Secondary Education Examination (SEE) will be held this year. However, in a recent interview the Minister for Education, Science and Technology Giriraj Mani Pokharel expressed concern about the possible breakdown of the academic calendar due to COVID-19 and stated his desire to schedule the SEE for the middle of June. We need to give serious thought to whether this rescheduling is in the best interest of the 482,219 young people involved.

To begin with, it would have been good not to mention a date, amidst current uncertainties about how the pandemic will affect the country. But more importantly, this lockdown is an opportunity to rethink the very idea of the SEE, which was introduced in place of the tried-and-tested School Leaving Certificate (SLC) in 2017. There are many things that need to be done in order to improve the quality of education for children in Nepal, and the cancellation of the SEE is one of them. While this was a fact even before COVID-19, the pandemic and lockdown have provided us with the opportunity to think outside the box and to push for positive change.