Large-scale failure in SSC exams is not a new phenomenon in our country. If I remember, more than half of the examinees failed to cross the SSC barrier in previous years also, despite rampant growth in cheating that was on an accelerated path year to year. The low point in the SSC exam this year is largely attributed (I am told) to (a) new grading system, and (b) reforms in exams that cheating would not help to overcome. But accepting these as aggravating factors for non-performance would be like hiding our heads in the sand. The statistics of previous years speak for themselves. Our schools have continuously churned in massive numbers of ill-educated, thoroughly unprepared students at the SSC exam gates whose only hope to get through was illegitimate help and support of their coaches and mentors (including parents, in some cases) during the course of exams. There was never any serious attempt at stemming this tide of ever growing failed SSC students, finding out the causes and redressing them. Our schools became one massive production industry of unemployable youths.

An ironic by-product of our growth in literacy (which is mainly a result of higher primary school enrollment) is increase in large number of secondary schools, which continued to operate under a termite-infested system. The system taught less of concept and more of blind reading of text, encouraged cramming, and judged a student's academic performance on a sole yearly exam. Barring government operated institutions, and a handful of private schools fueled by astronomical tuition fees, teaching faculties that have neither training nor motivation to educate their charge has run majority of the secondary schools. [Government schools account for less than 3% of all secondary school teachers, and less than 5% of all students.] And on top, politicisation of the teachers in the name of unions, and their affiliations to local political overlords have guaranteed that the schools continue to be in the iron grip of non-performing, ill-educated teachers.

Government regulation of this vast number of privately operated schools has been perfunctory at best, perhaps of necessity. Supervision of some thirteen thousand schools spread over the nooks and crannies of the country is not an easy task. It is particularly difficult when the government cannot meet demand of a rising population for more schools, and others fill in. Quality is sacrificed for quantity. Schools have mushroomed with threadbare structure, little or no equipment, and-- most lamentably -- have been resourced with instructors supplied by the same dysfunctional education system. Government has aided the status quo unwittingly by continuing with the politically popular subsidy of the failed school system, and further deterioration of the standards by succumbing to political pressure of accreditation of new schools regardless of quality. Since success of a school depended on the number of students qualifying in SSC exam, and the major motivation of the students was acquisition of the SSC certificate, the goal of the teachers and the taught naturally was sorting out the easy way to achieve these. The exam system, the syllabus, and teaching technique colluded together all these years to perpetuate production of a thoroughly unusable human resource in most of our secondary schools.

I congratulate the education ministry in trying to rein in the festering decay of the education system with the introduction of exam reforms and grading system. Better late than never. But the reforms also bring in the proverbial "chicken or egg" question. The new grading and exam system requires that the schools adequately prepare to face the altered rule of the game. It requires that some 150 thousand school teachers be trained to prepare their students for their next ordeal. I hope the ministry has a plan in parallel to train the teachers not only in the new exam and grading system, but also in bringing about a total change in our century-old, hidebound teaching technique, and in school syllabus.

An equally important step in reforming the school system is incentives for the schools to improve teacher's quality and overall environment for education, in addition to higher success rate in exams. Assuming that government subventions to private schools will continue in the foreseeable future, I would suggest that an incentive be built in the system. The system of subsidy should encourage the schools to vie among themselves for these funds, in stead of qualifying for them automatically either due to political pressure or as gratuity. A point system could be developed based on four criteria: (a) the school's success rate in last SSC; (b) trained teachers as a percent of total teachers in the school; (b) availability of library/laboratory facilities in the schools; and (d) teacher/student ratio (higher the better). There would be a minimum threshold (of points) to qualify for government grants; and the amount of grant would be based on the total points scored by a school on the above criteria.

Critics charge that failure of the regular educational system (that is formal, secular education) in Pakistan led to the growth and resurgence of alternative education, which had some disturbing effect on recent political history of that country. We have no reason to believe that our secular education system cannot be salvaged, at least as yet. But we have to be mindful that unless the reforms, some of which are already underway, are implemented in great speed, we may have to witness unleashing of a youth force misguided by designs of elements that may want to foist "alternative systems" in the country.

Ziauddin M Choudhury, a former civil servant in Bangladesh, works for an international organization in the US.