The most interesting thing about SLC which I have seen and experienced in my long teaching career is the practice of keeping the students like criminals in jail from early morning to late evening and making them study. This custom is seen among most private schools in the Kathmandu valley and some major cities in Nepal. Some are even forced to live in the school hostel while they prepare for the SLC exams. By any means, they are literally prepared to break the so-called Iron Gate. The children are mentally tortured with the unnecessary burden of extra classes and corporal punishment. Parents are forced to shoulder a heavy economic burden. In the name of SLC, the students’ real potential cannot be harvested, their creativity is hidden and their inner calibre can’t be explored. The children’s are treated like broiler chicken or hybrid living organisms.

When teachers of class 10 repeatedly focus on the SLC exam and make it sound like a very tough exam, and describe it like an iron gate which is very tough to break through, and when they say constantly that if the children fail the exam, their future will be dark and so on, this ultimately brings negative thoughts to the children’s minds. Parents are equally responsible for putting an unnecessary burden on their children by reminding them frequently that they should obtain excellent results in the SLC exam. The SLC result has became a matter of big pride for parents, a matter of gossip for their relatives and so on, but they don’t know that they are actually damaging the future of their children by aiming for only high marks and not real and practical knowledge which they will need in their lives.

Putting pressure on children harms their creativity and potential, and in the long term, the country has to bear the high cost. In fact, the main point I want to raise is that SLC is no more an Iron Gate. So teachers, parents and education experts must not focus only on getting high marks in SLC. They should focus on giving practical, scientific, life-based and modern education that will prepare students to adapt to today’s world.