After adopting letter grading for the School Leaving Certificate (SLC) examination results, the government has decided to replicate it in the Higher Secondary School examinations from next academic session that starts in July. The new evaluation system will be implemented in grade 11 examinations in the first year and in grade 12 the next year.

A meeting of the Higher Secondary Education Board presided over by Minister for Education Giriraj Mani Pokharel on Monday took the decision to this effect. The HSEB move came a week after a similar decision from the Council for the Technical Education Vocational Training. 

The board meeting has tasked a technical committee under Joint Secretary Durga Aryal to make recommendations on the number of grades and procedure to adopt in the evaluation process.

On December 10 last year, the Ministry of Education had decided to adopt letter grading in all category of the SLC exam, which was limited to the technical category only a year ago. “The letter grading will be gradually adopted in other levels,” Pokharel said in a statement on Tuesday. The results of the SLC examinations starting on March 31 will be categorised under nine levels. Under the new system, students securing between 90 and 100 marks will get A+; A for those scoring between 80 and 89; B+ (between 70 and 79); B (60 and 69); C+ (50 and 59) and C (40 and 49).

Students securing between 20 and 39 marks will get D grades, E for those with scores between 1 and 19, while N which stands for ‘not graded’ will be given to students who did not appear for the exam or were expelled. As per the grading, A+ is equivalent to 4 GPA; A to 3.6; B+ to 3.2; B to 2.8; C+ to 2.4; C to 2.0; D to 1.6 and E to 0.8.

There will be no pass and fail gradings in the mark-sheet. However, those scoring below grade C are considered fail as the HSEB is mulling not to admit them in grade 11. Any student who is unsatisfied with the marks can take a supplementary exam. Earlier, only those who failed in up to two subjects had been given such opportunity.