The Bhutanese Leading the way.
The National Education Assessment (NEA) 2024 found that class III students who reported “always” feeling happy at school fell from 44 percent in 2021 to 28 percent in 2024, a decrease by 16 percent.
This drop in happiness level should not come as a surprise given the higher amount of homework, class assignments and tests given even from the Pre Primary classes onwards in preparation for the class 6 and 8 board exams introduced in 2023 and 2022 respectively.
The exams were put in place with the aim of checking on the quality of education and improving it.
Board exams are high-stakes assessments and introducing them at class 6 and 8 can place undue psychological pressure on children as young as 11 to 13 years old and even younger down the line.
This may lead to anxiety, stress, and even loss of interest in learning, as the focus shifts from curiosity to rote preparation.
Teachers and schools may ‘teach to the test’, focusing on subjects and topics most likely to appear in exams. This reduces space for creative learning, critical thinking exercises, sports, arts, and extracurricular activities that are important for holistic development.
Frequent board exams may encourage parents and teachers to start categorizing students as ‘bright’ or ‘weak’ too early, which can harm self-esteem and demotivate those who develop at a different pace.
Rural schools with fewer resources might see poorer results compared to urban schools, widening the education and opportunities gap.
Instead of going for an exam oriented system the aim has to be to address the root causes of the poor quality of education in Bhutan.
In the past many education reforms in Bhutan were top-down and concentrated on changing systems without ensuring that teachers were ready or adequately trained to implement them.
This led to policy fatigue as frequent changes created confusion among teachers and students, who were constantly adapting rather than mastering.
Teacher training programs in Bhutan often focus more on theory and not enough on classroom practice.
The teaching profession itself has struggled with low morale, limited career progression, and sometimes inadequate pay compared to the demands placed on teachers.
Even with reforms, a motivated, skilled teacher workforce has been difficult to build and teacher quality directly drives student outcomes.
Many students reach classes 4 to 6 without strong literacy or numeracy skills, making it hard to catch up later.
The earlier reforms focused heavily on higher classes like 10 and 12 exam results, but often neglected pre-primary and primary quality, where the foundation is laid.
Schools, Dzongkhags, and even policymakers judge success based on pass rates which is what the exam system is all about. This creates pressure to push students through the system regardless of whether they have mastered the skills leading to poor learning outcomes in higher grades.
Rural schools often face teacher shortages, lack of subject specialists, poor infrastructure, and limited access to digital learning tools. Reforms designed for better-equipped urban schools do not always translate well to these settings, widening the urban–rural learning gap.
Education reform has often changed with each new government or education minister. The frequent shifts from Continuous Assessment to reintroducing board exams, from activity-based learning to more traditional rote approaches mean there has been little stability for teachers and students to adjust and excel.
Education quality is not just a school issue. Many parents, especially in rural areas, cannot actively support children’s learning due to work, literacy, or socio-economic constraints.
Reforms have often focused within the school system without addressing home learning environments.
Bhutan’s curriculum has often been too ambitious for available teaching hours, leaving little time for depth, creativity, or remedial teaching. Teachers are forced to rush through content rather than ensuring mastery.
Decisions have often been made without strong evidence or longitudinal data about what actually improves learning outcomes. For example, reforms like replacing exams with continuous assessment were implemented, then rolled back, without proper measurement of impact.
If one were to look at solutions then in the short term of one to two years the aim should be to stop any harm from the policy churn, get a clear evidence baseline, and fix the biggest failures fast.
There should be a policy freeze for 12 to 18 months and in this time, there should be a nationwide diagnostic which can be a low-stakes learning assessment for early grades. There should be a short, standardised diagnostic in literacy and numeracy (grades 1 to 4 and 5 to 8) to map learning gaps by school or Dzongkhag. The results should be used to prioritise remedial support rather than punish schools.
We should then produce and distribute clear lesson plans, simple formative assessment tools, and scripted remedial modules for teachers in primary grades paired with brief in-school coaching visits.
Past research has shown that teachers often need practical classroom materials and coaching rather than more theoretical training.
We should protect student well-being by mandating counselling and play-based learning time for primary classrooms to reduce stress and improve engagement while this remedial work runs.
In the medium term of two to five years the aim should be to strengthen teachers, close urban-rural gaps, and reform assessments so they support learning.
We should professionalise teaching with a coherent career pathway. We should link continuous professional development to promotion or recognition, establish coaching or mentorship networks, and scale school-based teacher professional development (TPD) rather than one-off workshops.
This is because teacher quality is the single biggest determinant of learning and multiple studies have called for a more practice-focused TPD and career incentives.
We should invest heavily in early-grade foundational learning (PP to Grade 3). Expand trained pre-primary staff, simple foundation literacy and numeracy curricula, and parent-engagement programmes to create stronger home-school links.
We should move from high-stakes exams toward a mixed assessment model. There should be summative checkpoints in upper grades but also build robust continuous formative assessment so exams inform learning rather than gatekeep.
We should close the resource gap for rural schools by deploying mobile specialist teachers, rotating subject experts, and a prioritized resource fund for ICT and basic lab materials to disadvantaged Dzongkhags.
In the long run of 5 to 10 years the aims should be to embed durable, evidence-based systems that sustain learning gains and adapt to future needs.
There should be curriculum rationalization toward competency-based outcomes. We should prune overloaded content, define mastery standards, and align textbooks, teacher training, and assessment with competencies like critical thinking, problem solving, foundational literacy and numeracy.
We should build a national learning data dashboard to track indicators like foundational learning, attendance, teacher deployment and use them for budget and policy decisions.
Leaders can use the data to allocate remedial support.
We should shift budget lines to guarantee early-grade support, teacher mentoring, and rural infrastructure. There should be incentive schemes to retain trained teachers in rural areas like housing, hardship allowances, fast-track promotion etc.
We should then embed parents, local governments, and CSOs in school improvement plans and use School Improvement Grants tied to measurable student learning gains.
In all of the above there should be pilot projects before scaling it up; teachers should be protected from punitive accountability so that data is used to support and not to punish and avoid narrow pass-rate targets that encourage teaching-to-the-test; and we should leverage international partners for technical assistance while keeping national ownership.
“The mind is not a vessel to be filled, but a fire to be kindled” — Plutarch