Education System in Bhutan

¬¬ Acknowledgement Getting this research done was a team effort. Our sincere appreciation goes to Mr. Sangay Tenzin, examination controller of Bhutan council for School Examination and Assessment, for his kind support to get standardized test scores of tenth and twelfth standard; Mr. Sonam Gyeltshen working under Bhutan council for School Examination and Assessment staffed under IT Department for his tireless work in getting the scores and providing us with the same; Dr.

Shivaraj Bhattarai dean of Royal Thimphu College, for his kind approval to let us go for the collection of data and also for his help in editing our approval letter; Mr.Deb Kumar Acharyya, program leader for BBA for his kind help in calling off the classes on the days of data collection; Mr. Rob Marjerison, module tutor of Research mMethodology at Royal Thimphu College for guiding us in writing research report. Content Acknowledgment……………………………………………………………………………….. I Abstract………………………………………………………………………………………….

II Introduction…………………………………………………………………………………... 1-2 Literature Review……………………………………………………………………………..

. 3 Design of the Study……………………………………………………………………………4 Analysis of Data………………………………………………………………………………. 5-9 Summary………………………………………………………………………………………. 0 Conclusion…………………………………………………………………………………….

.. 11 Bibliography……………………………………………………………………………………12 Appendix………………………………………………………………………………………13 Lists of tables and charts: Analysis of data Class ten scores in year wise sequence…………………………………………... 5-6 Class twelve scores in year wise sequence……………………………………….

. 7-8 Chart………………………………………………………………………………. 9 ? Abstract The core reason for us to do this research is to find out whether there is an improvement in the education quality in Bhutan in last five years or not. We have done this by taking into consideration the standardized test scores of twelfth and tenth standard.Also to show the trends of marks obtained by the students in examination and make the facts available as base for further analysis. The method we adopted is analytical research method where we will be using secondary data available from the records of BCSEA.

We selected randomly 50 samples each from both classes tenth and twelveth standards and found the mean to plot a graph to illustrate the facts, which will make it easier to understand the trends. The primary result that our research provides is that education quality in Bhutan has been remaining constant in last five years (2007-2011), with little bit of variation from year to year. hich more or less gives conclusion of being constant. The result of our findings plays a vital role, as this topic is mostly highly controversial and is discussed topic frequently. at all the point.

We see every time that people, higher executives, politicians, college, and schools administrators and parents talking about the education quality whether it is improving or deteriorating? Therefore, this finding will help to answer one of the most debated topics in Bhutan. ? Introduction The research problem is; “Is the quality of education in Bhutan improving or deteriorating in over the last five years? tThis is the one of the most controversial topics in Bhutan and for many years has been a concern where people keep on debating, sometimes write in blogs, organize debate and write articles. Modern education was started in early 1960’s and it has been noted as foundation for success of the nation. Education has played an important role in the development of the economy and today also education is receiving an important development priority from Royal government of Bhutan along with country’s development philosophy of GNH.

The main reason for us to choose this research problem is to clear the doubt of the people in Bhutan regarding this topic, “Is the quality of education in Bhutan improving or deteriorating in the last five years? ” Moreover quality of education has become a serious issue for the Bhutanese society. and at all the time. The hypothesis for our research goes, “The quality of education in Bhutan is deteriorating in last five years”.Education quality in Bhutan has been noted deteriorated in many aspects like, In olden days students were sent to school at later ages like eight or ten, where they are matured enough to learn and analyze the teachings. In present days children at the age of four or five are sent to school where they seem to be innocent and will not be able to grasp what is delivered. In past days most of the parents were illiterate and when they sent their children to school they feel that their child is doing something new and were treated with pride and dignity.

Whereas in today’s scenario, most of the parents are educated and when their child make mistake they refer it as blunder and incapable. It is said that, “The product quality directly correlates with the process quality” (Wangchuk 2009). To say that how good or bad the students are depends entirely upon how well they received the education. “The ‘quality input’ in a school setting encompasses adequately trained and motivated teachers, good infrastructure, good library, conducive teaching-learning environment, reasonable working hours, adequate stationary, normal motivated students and good recreational facilities.

Take away any of these attributes and the quality of education is bound to go down the drains” (Wangchuk 2009). The other factor which leads to deterioration of education is the allocation or right teacher for right subject. The various limitations associated in our research are like, our sample size is too small to represent the whole nation and post our findings as compared to that of optimum sample size, time allocated for us to collect data was only two days and we face lots of challenges for cash management and time management. Definition of terms used: GNH -Gross National Happiness.

BCSEA –Bhutan council for School Examination and assessment. ECO – Economics ENG - English DZO - Dzongkha GEO - Geography SCI - Science COMP - Computer HIST - History COM - Commerce ACC - Accounts B. Math – Business Math PHY - Physics CHE - Chemistry BIO - Biology Literature Review For getting this research done we have referred to many articles like, “is the quality of education in Bhutan deteriorating? ” by Pema Lhendrup in 2011 found that education quality in Bhutan is deteriorating with the fact that wrong teachers are ask to teach wrong subjects, for example a Geography specialist is asked to teach English in many schools [2].An article, “Be happy with a Maruti”, by Kuenga T Dorji, 2010 found that in 2006 when a foreign call centre seeking to branch into Thimphu held interviews of class XII pass-outs and concluded that the quality of written and spoken English was inadequate.

They were not able to write an application correctly. He also pointed out that in schools only theory has been given more importance and students possess no skills of application of those skills [1]. What quality of education are we looking at? Article by Wangchuk, 2009 states that teachers are not happy with the pay scales and politicians have increased the package of salary.Here he says that “monetary reward is not the ‘all cure antidote’ for the perceived decline of education quality” [4]. Also the article posted by Dorjay Rhigden Peljor in 2011, “Quality of education in Bhutan” states that education is deteriorating due to the fact that in present days most of the students are sent to schools in young age where they can’t grab what is taught to them and also most of the parents these days are educated and whenever their children make mistakes they blame their children and de-motivate [3].

According to Research Paper of 2008 titled “Quality of education in Bhutan”.Says that to measure the quality of education, there need to be use of frequent feedbacks from students side [5]. ? Design of the study The research design that we have adopted is analytical research method where we will be using secondary data available from the records of BCSEA. The source of our data is from BCSEA, where we are solely depending on secondary data, and the standardized test scores of class ten and twelve. The sampling procedure is random sampling from thousands of score of different students from various schools in Bhutan.

We went to BCSEA and asked for the standardized scores to make our analysis. Whereby we selected fifty samples of students each from both tenth and twelfth standards. To make our analysis we calculated mean marks of each year and compared for both class ten and twelve scores. Also we calculated combined mean of both class ten and twelve scores taking all fives into consideration.

? Analysis of data In order to analysis our data we have divide both class ten and twelve scores and found the mean marks of each as shown below: Class ten scores in year wise sequence;SL NoGenderYearMARKS MARKS IN % EngDzoEcoMathsHistory Civics & GeoSciCOMP 1F200748484240383842. 33 2F200750604642464247. 67 3F200760608883747673. 50 4F200742443825424238. 83 5F200750464440444244. 33 6M200742604642504247.

00 7M200752696486546464. 83 8M200750666060606660. 33 9M200769886964747272. 67 10M200750725254546057. 00 548.

5054. 85 11M200850545044423846. 33 12M200869526969645062. 17 13M200854696462647264. 17 14M200874789269868680.

83 15M200869527254697865. 67 16F200852645248485052. 33 17F200869648880697874. 67 18F200869666446625259. 83 19F200876749494888885.

67 0F200854606228543849. 33 641. 0064. 10 21F200954727254645061.

00 22F200969648072746069. 83 23F200950465052524449. 00 24F200960527458725461. 67 25F200954586669585059. 17 26M200952585252525253. 00 27M200962588076586065.

67 28M200938505250404646. 00 29M200954696260625059. 50 30M200952724240605854. 00 578.

8357. 88 31F201054766950664860. 50 32F201046696244484652. 50 33F201058785050484655.

00 34F201058698060606064. 50 35F2010547244283830 44. 33 36M2010447652445450 53. 33 37M2010467866545828 55. 00 38M2010507474586035 58. 50 39M2010547880646248 64.

33 40M2010426960464828 48. 3 556. 8355. 68 41F2011727276697666 71.

83 42F2011607264445238 55. 00 43F2011586252384638 49. 00 44F2011547252445440 52. 67 45F20116950605452 7459. 83 46M20116644626458 8663. 33 47M2011506950466248 54.

17 48M2011465040445044 45. 67 49M2011696474667669 69. 67 50M2011626972507458 64. 17 585. 3358.

53 ? Class twelve scores in year wise sequence; SL NoGenderYearMARKS MARKS IN % ENGDZODZO rizhungHISTGEOECOCOMACCCOMP StudiesB. MathsMathsPHYCHEBIO 1F20076054 485050 30 48. 67 2F20072852 307446 46. 00 3F20076960 585066 44 57.

83 4F20074254 48524230 44. 7 5F20076654 5878838069. 83 6M20077262 666678 68. 80 7M20075848 466069 50 55. 17 8M20074248 46204048 40. 67 9M20077474 8366 30 65.

40 10M20075248 587846 56. 40 553. 4355. 34 11F20085866 627452 62. 40 12F20084858 405242 50 48.

33 13F20086446 785862 61. 60 14F20087666 8064646969. 83 15F20085046 545835 48. 60 16M20085060 354640 46. 20 17M20087242 7458586261. 00 18M20087258 806962 68.

20 19M20086235 586478 59. 40 20M20085446 627858 59. 60 585. 1758. 52 1F20094454 58484842 49. 00 22F2009526060546058 57.

33 23F20095050 50524420 44. 33 24F20095066 447880 28 57. 67 25F20096072 4446546056. 00 26M20094862 62835844 59. 50 27M20094454 484615 41. 40 28M20096260 948372 74.

20 29M20096662 6986907473. 50 30M20096666 66 787286 72. 33 585. 2758. 53 SL NOGENDERYEARMARKS MARKS IN % ENGDZODZO rizhungHISTGEOECOCOMACCCOM STUDIESB.

MATHSMATHSPHYCHEMBIO 31F20104662 508340 56. 20 32F20105064 506274 72 62. 00 33F20107272 9286766677. 33 34F20104860 6946605055. 0 35F20105266 304220 22 38. 67 36M20106050 62645886 63.

33 37M20104254 48722046 47. 00 38M2010487260698628 60. 50 39M20104469 804025 51. 60 40M20106064 60 606960 62. 17 574.

3057. 43 41F20115266 32405255 49. 50 42F20114858 44485240 48. 33 43F20116983 52526464.

00 44F20115048 62 4042 48. 40 45F2011525562305534 48. 00 46M20114840 6460 50 52. 40 47M20114062 50586454. 80 48M20115272743276 61. 20 49M20115858 696950 62 61.

00 50M20114642 50696664 45. 50 533. 1353. 31To get the clear picture of the above tables, a graph has been drawn to make analysis simple to understand at a glance, as shown below. YearClass 10 result (x)Class 12 result (y) 200754. 8555.

34 200864. 1058. 52 200957. 8858.

53 201055. 6857. 43 201158. 5353.

31 TOTAL291. 05283. 13 MEAN58. 2156. 63 Mean of x = 58. 21 Mean of y = 56.

63 From above tables and chart what we can conclude is that the trend of scores of tenth standard is 2007 = 54. 85%, 2008 = 64. 10%, 2009 = 57. 88%, 2010 = 55. 68%, 2011 = 58. 53%, and for twelfth standard its is 2007 = 55.

34%, 2008 = 58. 52%, 2009 = 58. 53%, 2010 = 57. 3%, 2011 = 53. 31%. There is more or less little variation in percentage of scores from year to year, so the result is education quality is in constant for last five years.

Result was better in the year 2008 as compared to other years and in all the five years; scores are above 50% on overall average. ? Summary The research question on which we were doing research is, “Is the quality of education in Bhutan improving or deteriorating in the last five years? ” In Bhutan this research problem is mostly a frequently discussed topic and plays a vital role in the development of nation along with the core concept of GNH.The research method that we have used is analytical research and all the analysis made is based on the facts available from the BCSEA office. We have taken the standardized test scores of twelfth and tenth standard and picked a sample size of 100, where 50 samples are from tenth standards and 50 samples from twelfth standards. With the data available what we have found is that there is more or less little variation in percentage of scores from year to year, so the result is education quality is in constant for last five years.

Result was better in the year 2008 as compared to other years and in all the five years; scores are above 50% on overall average. ? Conclusion This research paper basically focused on looking at the education quality in Bhutan. According to our hypothesis, education quality was supposed to be deteriorating, but with the help of the facts available it is proved that education quality in Bhutan has been more or less remaining constant for last five years. With available facts we have drawn our conclusion of education quality being remaining constant.We only took into considerations the marks obtained by the students and we didn’t take into considerations that what factors are actually leading the education quality to remain constant for last five years, this will be left for further studies.

? Bibliography Dorji, Kunga. (2010, 6 Jan. ). Be happy with Maruti.

Retrieved form www. drukpa. bt/bhutan/3/test// Lhendrup, Pema. (2011, 13 Nov. ).

Is the quality education in Bhutan deteriorating?. Retrieved from Lhendrup. blogspot. com/2011/11/is-quality-of-education-in-bhutan. tml Peljor, Dorjay.

(2011, 23 Jan. ). Quality of education in Bhutan. Retrieved from dorjayrhigdenpeljor.

blogspot. com/2011/01/quality-of-education-in-bhutan. html Wangchuk, Dorji. (2009, 25 Oct. ).

What quality of education are we looking at?. Bhutan observer. Retrieved from www. bhutanobserver.

bt/what-quality-of-education-are-we-looking-at/ Sherab, Kezang. (2009 June. ). Quality of education in Bhutan.

Centre of educational research and development. Retrieved from www. pce. edu. bt/cerd/quality%20of%20Education%20II.

pdf