Five years after adopting the letter grading system for the evaluation of school level exams, the government is preparing to revise the system by introducing the "Non Graded" or “Fail” category.

The government introduced the grading system of assessment in 2016 following the eighth amendment to the Education Act-1972 which restructured the education system, making Grade 12 the final school year and scrapping the School Leaving Certificate (SLC).

The grading system was adopted so no student would fail their Secondary Education Examinations, the Grade 10 finals, which replaced the SLC.

The system, however, has led to a deterioration in study among students, officials say.

To address this issue, “Non Graded” category has been proposed in the exam results of grades 10, 11 and 12, which is equivalent to failure.

A committee led by Usha Jha, former member of the National Planning Commission, has made a recommendation to this effect.

“The proposal has been forwarded to the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology for endorsement,” Ganesh Bhattarai, spokesperson for the Curriculum Development Centre, told the Post. “The National Curriculum Development and Evaluation Council chaired by the Minister for Education has to endorse it.”

The Education Ministry is without a minister at present.

As per the recommendation, attaining 35 percent marks in theory and 40 percent in practical exams will be mandatory to pass the respective grades.

Except in Mathematics, there are practical marks for all other seven subjects in the SEE.

At present, the obtained marks in theory and practical are added to ascertain the total marks a student has got in respective subjects. Once the new provision is implemented, the obtained marks will be counted separately.

Currently, the letter grading system of evaluation allows students to pursue higher education irrespective of how badly they have performed in their exams.

Those getting a GPA below 1.6 have to choose technical courses while those willing to study Grade 11 under the regular stream must score above 1.6 GPA.

“Non-Graded means failure. The provision was necessary because there are complaints about degradation in students’ study,” Jha told the Post. “We made the recommendation after studying the evaluation system in different countries.”

Questions over the letter grading system have been raised ever since it was adopted five years ago. Some education experts argue that the letter grading system doesn’t apply in Nepal where the knowledge of students is tested through a three-hour examination. At present, the teachers provide the marks to students in numbers which are then converted into grades.

Education experts have suggested that the government must shift to a continuous assessment system if letter grading is to be implemented effectively.

Under continuous assessment, teachers evaluate the day-to-day performance of students and rate them based on their overall performance in the entire academic year. Under practical assessment, students are asked what life skills they have learnt.

The ongoing preparations to revise the grading system show the inconsistency in our education evaluation process, says Binay Kusiyait, a professor at Tribhuvan University.

“This inconsistency has arisen because the government introduced the letter grading system without proper study,” Kusiyait told the Post. “The evaluation system wouldn’t have needed a revision had it not been introduced in a haste.”

Education experts say if the government is looking forward to changing the letter grading system, it should also decide to adopt the continuous evaluation system instead of making the students sit for a three-hour test.

“The present evaluation system needs an overhaul,” Dhananjaya Sharma, a former principal at Gyanodaya School, Bafal, told the Post. “Merely adding the Non-Graded category isn’t enough.”