The Bhutanese Leading the way.
During the result declaration of classes 6 and 10 on 2nd February, all the media houses were gathered in a conference hall. With the presence of the Minister of Education and Skills Development, Dimple Thapa, and also officials from BCSEA and BHSEC, informative presentations on the results were presented and most importantly opportunities were given to the reporters to ask other education-relatable questions.
A question raised by the media was about the changes in the education system due to how youths are being affected by very limited opportunities, especially the Arts students, the minister stated, “I think the Ministry of Education and Skills Development is trying to bring a change in the education system and we all know that the education system that we have now is not up to the international standard, where I think our education system doesn’t stand near to that.”
Furthermore, the minister also said, “Our effort is to bring the education system to the global standard by incorporating the twenty-first-century skills and whatever technology is used these days. So, I feel this is why the youths feel that they are given less opportunity.” She also said that the students should be given courses and streams that align with the job opportunities in the country. In addition, she said that the Ministry of Education shall collaborate with the Ministry of Labor and Human Resources (MoICE) and look for opportunities. At the same time, they will try to provide the kind of skills that align with the given opportunity to combat these challenges at the earliest.
She also shared that the Ministry of Education and Skills Development will be focusing on upskilling more of the skills in their upcoming plans and programs. She further disclosed that they will be unfolding their plans at the earliest stage which is yet to be agreed upon and to be finalized.
When asked about the decision to set the trial papers by BCSEA and BHSEC, one of the officials from the Ministry of Education and Skills in the meeting said that the teachers are not confident in setting competency-based questions and he feels that the trial examination is an important stage where students can prepare for their common examinations and they decided that they should standardize trial examinations to streamline how questions should be set.
They said that they had not done any in-depth research as to how beneficial it could be as they were busy with the trial papers and right after that, they were busy with the board examinations and markings. Therefore, they could not formally get feedback from the teachers and students, but they communicated with the teachers informally and they had different opinions which they are planning to collect soon.
Nevertheless, when they visited some of the schools of twenty dzongkhags, they realized that many teachers welcomed the trial examinations owing to teacher workload reduction as preparation and correction took a lot of time.
They highlighted their main objective in setting trial papers by themselves unlike the individual school teachers in the past and said it is to set competency-based questions and this decision was shared by them to have the same competency-based questions to be attempted by the students. According to their responses, they feel that some teachers might want their school to have a high pass percentage with the added internal assessment which decreases the quality of education and might not match the level of question the students will be appearing for their common examinations.
However, they feel that when the students are informed of a new curriculum where even their trial papers are to be set by BCSEA and BHSEC, the students invest in hard work and determination with the set motive to not fail. On the positive side, it also helps the students to experience what a competency-based question is and prepare beforehand. This is what happened as a result says the officials, as they are witnessing an increase in academic performance by the students and they believe this could be the reason for this positive impact.
When a question from the reporter’s side was asked about the extra expenditure being used by setting trial papers the education minister said “In terms of extra expenditure, I believe you should look at it from a positive side, education is an important aspect of the development of youths and is also the foundation. So, we should not compromise in education.”
Another official who was present in the meeting said since the setting of the trial examination paper by the BCSEA and BHSEC was just introduced in 2023, they are yet to finalize whether the same will be applied in 2024 or not depending on their impact study and will be shared with the public later.
