How Chin State schools fared in English in 2015 matriculation exam

How Chin State schools fared in English in 2015 matriculation exam As many of us have long rightly guessed, the primary reason of Chin State’s chronic low status of basic education is English. The following statistical evidences of 2015 matriculation exam pass rate in English will substantiate this situation. The statistic is limited to “in-school” students. By in-school, the writer means students who register with and attend schools from the very beginning of the school year, not out-school students who do not do the same as the in-school students, but register only to take the matriculation exam. The exclusion of out-school students from this article is because the writer does not have their information on their exam results.

In 2015, there were 4468 in-school students across Chin State who took English exam. Of them, only a small fraction of 722 passed English and it constitutes just 16.16 in percentage. Here, it is noteworthy that other than English, Physics and Mathematics are the subjects in which most students failed with pass rates of 29.48 % for the former and 30.06 % for the latter respectively. The subject which has the highest pass rate is Biology with 59.63 % of students passing it. After this subject, Burmese and Economics come in second and third respectively with pass rates of 57.48 % and 43.24 %. The pass rates of the other three subjects are Geography 37.75 %, Chemistry 36.73 % and History 33.83%.

Chin State has 68 schools and those schools which have English pass rates of under 10 % numbers 35 and of them 16 have pass rate of 0 %, that is, there is no student who passed English in these 16 schools. Some of these schools have no passing students in other subjects. It is such a sad thing that more than half ( 60 %) the total number of schools across Chin State fall under 10 % pass rate in English.

This generalized average percentage of 16.16 is not sufficient to highlight the performance of each township in English for there lies significant disparities of pass rates across townships. Of the nine townships, Tedim Tsp has the highest point of pass rate; it had 946 students taking English exam in 2015 and, of them, 255 passed the subject, reaching 26.96 %. Hakha comes in second (169 out of 860 passed the subject) with 19.65 % of pass rate. Falam and Mindat Tsps come closely behind Hakha Tsp with 18.75 % ( 93 out of 496 )and 17.30 % ( 68 out of 393 ). Kanpetlet Tsp has pass rate of 12.72% (22 out of 173). The remaining four townships have pass rates of under 10 %. Tunzang Tsp has 8.96 % of pass rate( 24 out of 268), Matupi Tsp 7.27 % ( 37 out of 509 ), Thantlang Tsp 6.07 % ( 13 out of 214 ) and Paletwa Tsp 5.64 % (40 out of 709).

The average pass rate of in-school students in 2015 matriculation exam in Chin State is 13.15 % (588 out of 4471). The combined pass rate of both in-school and out-school students is 17.84 % while the country’s national pass rate is 37.60 % on average. These statistics clearly presents that Chin State, if it has a desire to upgrade its poor status in education, needs to give focus on English. The above percentages also indicate disparities among the nine townships, and those townships with lowest rankings in the English result are also the ones with low standard of overall results. For instances, only 5.08 % (36 out of 709) students in Paletwa Tsp passed the matrix exam in 2015. Although Tedim township which has a relative high pass rate in English at 26.96 % (which implies that its overall student pass rate in all subjects is lower than this number), the township is far from the average pass rate of national level of 37.60 %.

It is also noteworthy that except for Hakha, Falam and Tedim Tsps, all the other townships have almost no prospects for students to pass exam with high marks to be able to enter much aspired schools of the country such as Magway medical institute, Mandalay technological school and other professional schools. Chin State, therefore, needs not only to upgrade the general pass rate of the matrix exam to at least the average national pass rate but also to heighten the exam marks.

The above statistics are horribly disappointing, and no better future for education is on the horizon. Several years have passed without surpassing 20 % of pass rate in the state. In spite of poor ranking every year, no specific actions has been taken so far. The chief responsible body for promoting education, government educational department, seems not to have any special programs for Chin State’s education. As a matter of fact, the task of uplifting education lies with the social ministry of Chin State. The Chin State education department, which lies under the control of social ministry, should no longer spare time in formulating educational policy for Chin State which will inevitably entail particular orientation to English for this subject is the major cause of poor results in the state’s education.

The miserable pass rate of the matriculation exam for several consecutive years has a serious impact on people in the state with possibly deeper measure in southern part of the state. No area of youths’ loss from this poor pass rate will be more evident than in employment in public sector. As we all have known, there had been, in the past five year period, mass recruits of teaching staff in Chin State for about three times. In these recruitments, the number of local youths in some southern part of the state who had already passed matriculation exam and finished higher education was not adequate enough to fill all the vacant teaching positions, and youths from other region which has a large surplus of graduate came up and filled the still required positions. In the final recruitment, the number of youths from other region vastly outnumbered the local graduates. This is simply because these townships do not have the required workforce to fill the vacancies. It is a sad thing for many of the local youths who remain unemployed for not passing the matriculation exam. The same is true in other public sector employments which require technological skills like engineering and in computer. If these townships had had high number of pass rates in the past years, most of these jobs would be for them. These would surely enhance their socio-economic status. If study is made deep into the lives of many youths in the state, much more will still come out regarding the state’s loss in many areas of it social life as the result of poor education. Salai Kham Tin Thang