MEET ATTEMPTS TO FIND CAUSES FOR 53% FAILIRE IN SLC AMIDREPORTS OF SUICIDES BY UNSUCCESSFUL STUDENTS Kathmandu, 14 June: Amid reports of more than four suicides by students who filed this year’s SLC examinations, intense soul searching stared Friday on the reasons for 53 percent failure in the tests. No person or institution is taking direct responsibility for the high percentage of failure that has caused family problems. Parents, schools and government have lost time and money. . RSS reports: After the poor results of the School Leaving Certificate (SLC) Examinations, the stakeholders have started blame game on each other for the poor performance. Stakeholders have said that the huge amount of investment made in education sector was wasted and the government policies had failed as only 47.16 per cent students passed the SLC examinations. Educationists have said that the ambitious School Sector Reform Programme (SSRP) brought forth by the government with the slogan 'Education for all' also turned out to be a failure. Under the SSRP, the government has adopted a policy to increase quality of education by managing from Grade 9 to 12 as the secondary level. The SSRP was commenced from 2009 with 2,626 million U.S dollars. The educationists have said that Education Ministry and teachers should take a moral responsibility of degrading results of the SLC while the Ministry has said that all should be responsible for the poor results. Educationist Dr Tirtha Khaniya said the Ministry should take responsibility as the Ministry and Examination Controller's Office were only centered on administrative works instead of academic ones. Spokesperson at Ministry Janardan Nepal said, "We will work for alternative system to this by undertaking study on it." Nepal said the curriculum should be action-oriented, interesting and useful and changes are necessary in examinations and teaching methods as well. However, Chairman of the Nepal National Teachers' Organization Baburam Adhikari said only teachers were not to blame for poor results. He claimed that the results were poor as provision of send-up was not made compulsory. "Detailed study on examinations should be carried out," he added. nnnn