Flouting the existing legal provisions, the private educators have announced send-up examinations for the School Leaving Certificate claiming that it is necessary to give exposure to the students following government’s adoption of the letter grading system this year.

At a press meet in the Capital on Monday, the National Private and Boarding Schools Association Nepal (NPabsan) asked all its member schools to conduct pre-board examination from January 28 next year. A student will be charged around Rs 500 for the exam, the association said. A fifth of around half a million students taking the SLC examinations come from the private schools. The exams start on March 31, 2016. The private schools stand to make a cumulative Rs50 million if they conduct the test charging Rs 500 on average from each student.

Though Education Regulations (Sixth Amendment, 2011) bars schools from holding send-up exams to select students for the SLC, the private schools have been conducting the test to pick excellent students for good results which they often use to attract students at the beginning of new academic session.

According to the regulations, tenth graders having at least 70 percent attendance cannot be barred from taking the SLC exams. Any schools found to have violated the rule are liable to a fine of Rs25,000 and other disciplinary actions from the respective District Education Office.

The NPabsan officials, however, maintain that they are holding the send-up test with intension to inform the students about the Letter Grading Evaluation System. The Education Ministry had approved the letter grading on December 10 as recommended by the National Curriculum Development and Evaluation Council. There will be nine types of grades based on the marks obtained by the students for both technical and general category.

The NPabsan has also demanded the ministry include 50 percent from the internal evaluation in the final examination. “The three-hour examination alone cannot evaluate overall performance of students. Therefore, schools should be allowed to provide 50 percent marks on the basis of internal evaluation,” said NPabason chair Karna Bahadur Shahi.