KATHMANDU, May 15: What should have been a moment of relief for thousands of students has instead turned into frustration for many, as errors continue to surface in this year’s Secondary Education Examination (SEE) results.
Three students from the Electrical Engineering stream at Viswa Niketan Secondary School, Tripureshwar, who had appeared in all their exams, were shocked to find themselves marked “absent” in the results published on 11 May by the National Examination Board (NEB), Nepal.
The mistake triggered confusion among students, parents, and the school administration. The school principal, Herambaraj Kandel, later forwarded the students’ documents—including exam centre details and symbol numbers—to the examination office for correction.
While acknowledging the frustration, Kandel praised the NEB for publishing results within just 27 days for over 430,000 students, calling it a rare administrative achievement. However, he warned that speed appeared to have come at a cost. “Without proper training for examiners, such errors are not surprising,” he said.
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He also pointed out that similar issues had surfaced last year, including cases where students were wrongly marked absent. Despite expanding evaluation centres and mobilising large numbers of teachers, he said, the pattern of mistakes continues.
According to Controller of Examinations Tukaraj Adhikari, the NEB adopted a faster evaluation system using expanded centres and manpower this year. He claimed the overall error rate had decreased compared to previous years.
Still, the problems are visible: students marked absent, incorrect dates of birth, mismatched symbol numbers, and even subjects being wrongly recorded.
The SEE examinations were held from 2 April to 12 April, 2026, with results published within 28 days after Minister for Education and Sports Sashmit Pokharel’s directive to speed up the process.
This year, 65.98 percent of students passed—an increase of 4.3 percent from last year’s 61.68 percent. A total of 430,667 regular examinees appeared in the exam.
But behind the improved pass rate lies a growing administrative burden. Deputy Controller of Examinations Taranath Niraula said around 100 students are visiting the office daily with complaints. So far, about 300 correction applications have been received.
One recent case involved a student who had scored excellent marks in six subjects but showed no result in one. Officials later discovered a simple but costly mistake: a wrong symbol number entered during the exam.
Most errors, according to the NEB, stem from data entry mistakes at schools, miswritten symbol numbers by students, and inconsistencies during manual entry of marks.
To ease the process, the NEB has allowed students to submit correction requests through district-level education offices instead of traveling to Bhaktapur. Rechecking is also available at Rs 2,000 per subject, where students can review answer sheets with experts and guardians present.
As complaints continue to pile up, the SEE results—meant to mark a new beginning—are instead exposing cracks in the system that many say urgently need fixing.
