Why Support doing Away of Cut-Off Point to Study Higher Secondary Education? (Part I)

In gratitude to my Great Druk Gyelpos

Had the basic education not been free, I would be tilting mud and chasing oxen without slightest understanding of larger world. Having enjoyed seventeen years of state funded education, I can now tilt the mud and chase oxen peacefully and proudly if I have to. 

Sincere gratitude to my Kings for free seven years of education.
With the current government and Ministry of Education doing ground work to provide free education up to class XII by doing away with cut-off point benchmarking system, the move is worth the support.
From the perspectival lenses of educationist, I would like to justify why we should support this change.

1.Education is Privilege of all
Education should not be privilage of only best, bright and rich. It is weak and the poor who need more educational support.
Although nothing is wrong with current policy of benchmarking based on grade to qualify students for Higher Secondary studies- considering the past financial situation, policy issues, educational beliefs and principals, time for policy rectification should be welcome change.  In current system, state funded Higher Secondary Education is enjoyed by best and the bright which leaves academically weak students venerable to unemployment, poverty and many other social problems. Children of able parents enjoy self-financed higher secondary education due to their financial might and advantage. In such educational scenario, fundamental higher secondary education is understood as welfare of best, bright and rich which makes free access to higher secondary studies difficult to all citizens.

2.Employability
Whenever vacancy accouchements are aired, criterions usually are class XII qualification or higher. Even if required qualification Class X passed, the jobs are taken by candidates having higher qualification. In such circumstances, most students with qualification class X or lower are not in employable section of society.

3.Education Quality
When government announced doing away with cut-off points, netizens took it to social media to express concern of deteriorating education quality that could result from policy change. Nonetheless, in truest sense, having cut-off point and one time grading of students to qualify for Higher Secondary Education cannot be used as yardstick to measure quality of education. Quality of education of a country should be measured by students’ access to education, skills and knowledge students possess, employability of students and capacity and competency of students which is directly proportional to the qualification a student possess. Thus, on rational ground, deterioration of education quality, if we are to do away with cut-off point should be out of our talk. 

4.Knowledge Based Society
Our Majesties, who guided Bhutan and her education system, envisioned making Bhutan a knowledge based society. If the Education Ministry and any government in office should work towards realizing farfetched visions of our Majesties, free Secondary Education to all youth of Bhutan is commendable way forward. Educating and schooling by nature of their responsibility is forefront stakeholder in building and promoting knowledge based society. In this backdrop, providing free and easy access to all youth is viable option from the list of educational change.

To be continued...

Note: The article may contain language errors.