School Student Academic Performance in Nepal: An Analysis Using the School Education Exam (SEE) Results

Abstract

Student academic performance is the most important indicator of educational development in every nation. The main purpose of this study was to analyze the academic performance of the grade 10 students in terms of their overall performance and its relationship with socio-demographic factors through the use of a quantitative research method. A total of 541 students (341 community and 200 private students) from seven local governments in the Dhankuta district were randomly selected to collect the data related to their socio-demographic characteristics and subject-wise score using a data collection template. The data were descriptively and inferentially analyzed in the support of SPSS. The key findings of the study revealed that the performance of most of all community school students (66%) is under a satisfactory level than private and they (85%) are very poor in Mathematics subjects than others. This study also concluded that there is also a wider gap in student performance between theory and practical subjects. Students from municipal government and Bramin/Chetri ethnic groups are doing better performance than others. The study finally, found that school type, local government type, nature of examination, and age & ethnicity of students make a significant difference in student achievement whereas gender does not.