CK Lal's 'Beyond the iron gate' (#139) was relevant, and extremely prescient. I am fascinated by the reaction and passion that Mr Lal's pieces generate, and think that this particular one on the SLC exams as well as the equally incisive piece by Ashutosh Tiwari ('The business of SLC', #140) should be translated into Nepali and be printed in our local language press.

Every year nearly 300,000 Nepali youngsters take the SLC exam.Two-thirds of them never make it and are branded 'failures' for the rest of their lives. If they pass, it is now clear that an SLC does not guarantee a good job or a bright future. It's a heads you lose, tails I win situation. It is obviously time to completely overhaul the SLC system, and change the curriculum so that our students can use schools to learn life skills, be creative, flexible and be imbued with a value system that will help the nation make progress. The key to Nepal's future development is education reform, not the haphazard and half-hearted reform that we have seen in the past decades, but the kind that will turn education into a true agent of change.

Buddhi Pant,
Coventry, UK