Primary school enrolment increased from 46,517 in 1991 to 78,007 in 1998 or by 7.7% annually which is more than the projected target of 6%. The gross primary enrolment ratio is estimated at 72% which is much lower than the target of 90%.This apparent anomaly may be explained by the high population growth during this period, estimated at 2.6% from 1991-93 and 3.1% from 1994-98. It is also estimated that during this period, the proportion of primary education aged children to the total population increased from 15% to 18%. This numbers to 18,000 which equals half the increase in enrolment registered during this period.

Furthermore, the net enrolment ratio is estimated at only 53%.The Bhutanese education system is characterized therefore by a high number of overaged children. One of the main reason for this is the late entry into schools. When a new school is established, it is quite common for parents to enrol anyone from 6 years to 12 years into the Pre-Primary classes. The other reason for this is the high repetition rate prevalent within the system.

Primary education is now (1998) provided in 115 community schools, 128 primary schools and in 42 of the 44 junior high schools and 7 private schools. Please see structure of Education on page 5. An interesting point as indicated by the table at right is a gradual decline in the growth rate from 10.5% between 1991-1992 to 4.5% between 1997-1998. The main reason for this is a result of the attempt made by the Government to slow the pace of enrolment expansion to match the availability of teachers and materials. Furthermore, this has also been contributed to by the application of more stringent rules to restrict the entry of under-age children in the schools as a measure of controlling grade repetition. Therefore the apparent deficiency in the progress related to coverage needs to be viewed within the light of these more positive developments.

It also needs to be mentioned here that enrolment rates remain estimates since accurate demographic data are not available. From the trend of the falling entry rate at PP, it is possible that Bhutan may be closer to the UPE level than indicated by the present statistics. To complicate matters, accurate data on children enrolled in the monastic schools, run either by the Central Monastic Body or private monasteries are not available and for this purpose only an estimated figure has been used.

Interestingly, the growth rate of 7.7% in the formal education system has not been so much as a result of increased intake as it is with the increased retention within the system. It may be seen from the table below that between 1992-1998, the intake at the primary education has increased by an average of 3.3% annually only. It is also evident that the growth rate has not always been uniform over the years under review. As a matter of fact, there were years where there were even decreases in the intake rate.

It may be also be noted that the growth rate for girls is higher at the intake level as well as in the total system.

One of the most important and effective factors for helping enhance the enrolment at the primary level has been the community schools. Community schools are essentially primary schools that cater to a specific community which can be a village or a cluster of villages. The school is built and maintained by the communities using locally available resource materials. The government supplies assistance for roofing materials and window sheets etc. which are not locally available.

During 1991-98, 158 new community schools were established in the most disadvantaged and remote parts of the Kingdom. The enrolment in the community schools has been growing steadily from 5,576 number of students in 1991 to well over 12,695 in 1998. Some of these schools have been converted to boarding primary schools thus catering also to other communities. Therefore at present (1998) there are only 115 schools retaining the name of community schools. It constitutes almost 17% of the total student population at the primary education level.

The establishment of community schools has made it possible for the Royal Government to provide educational opportunities to many of the population groups living in the rural and remote parts of the country without taxing the already limited resources of the government. It has helped ensure the sustainability of an expanding education service and is credited for having helped curb rural urban migration and reduced overcrowding in the urban schools.

These schools have also become the centre of continuing educational activity for many communities. The school facilities are used for conducting non formal education classes for the community using the existing teachers after school hours. Other vocational skills training are also conducted for the benefit of the community using the school facilities.

While 17% of the PP-VI enrolment expansion is attributable to the new community schools, the rest of the expansion was absorbed by the existing schools through additional developments in these schools such as creation of additional classrooms as well as increases in the class sizes. The result of these efforts is that there is now a generally higher level of enrolment in almost all the schools than existing in 1991 with the result that the average size of a community school is now 110 as compared to 66 in 1991. Similarly the average size of a primary and junior high school is now 326 and 671 as compared to 252 and 505 respectively in 1991.

Another programme which has helped enhance enrolment and retain students in schools is the school feeding programme. The mid-day meal scheme as well as the boarding provision has been instrumental in attracting and helping retain a large number of children in schools. Despite the proliferation of Community schools across the country, there remains many households which are located away from walking distances of these schools. Therefore mid-day meals and boarding schemes play a critical role in the enrolment of children from such households.

While the absence of social bias against girls has contributed to a steady growth of girls enrolment over the years, there have been certain factors which affect girls enrolment. In particular, the harsh terrain and the long distances children have to travel to reach schools have discouraged many girls from attending schools. Secondly, while many schools provide boarding facilities, these are of the barest kind and hardly suitable for the girls. Therefore, measures such as locating the schools closer to their homes (community schools), and improvement in boarding facilities where required have been instrumental too in contributing to the growth of girls enrolment. The institution of the School Management Board which facilitates the school managers to interact and get the influential community leaders to participate in helping the school has also influenced to a large degree in mobilizing community support to enrol girls where there have been specific problems. The ratio of girls to boys in the primary system is at 45:55 at present which is a marked improvement from 1991 when it was 41:59.

One of the inferences drawn from the study of gender balance in enrolment in different schools is that in many of the places which exhibit less girls ratio also have lower enrolment ratio, although at present there is limited population information to help us support this statistically. This follows from the premise that the harder the conditions for enrolment, the more it affects girls. It may also be concluded that despite the steady progress in this area, Bhutan will not attain its EFA targets of 50:50 by the year 2000. The main reason is the inability of the system to expand the schooling facilities in tune to the population growth rate.

The School for the Blind was upgraded to the National Institute for the Disabled and its management taken over by the Technical and Vocational Education Section of the Education Division. Consequently, the programme for the blind children was enhanced by including vocational skills into the curriculum. However, enrolment in the school remained constant at 1990 level of 30 students. A survey of the other disabilities which was planned is yet to be carried out.

Quality of education is determined to a large extent by the quality of teachers, the curriculum and learning organization as well as the availability of learning materials. Much effort and resources have been expended in improving these during the last 8 years.

Compared to 1,939 primary school teachers in 1991, there are now (1998) 2,184 teachers. The Bhutanese education system has historically relied heavily on the expatriate teachers. Compared to 683 (35%) expatriate teachers teaching in these schools in 1991, the expatriate staff has reduced to 305 (14%) in 1998. This has been as a result of the efforts made by the Government to increase the training capacities of the country's two teacher training institutions as well as to make the teaching profession much more attractive. Compared to a capacity of about 300 teacher trainees a decade ago, the two institutes can now accommodate over 600 teacher trainees. Teacher graduates for primary level have increased from 89 to 141 in 1998. The Royal Government recently (1998) also instituted a teaching allowance which provides an enhanced renumeration amounting to 15% of the basic pay for all primary school teachers to help attract better candidates to the teaching profession.

A comparison of the teacher profile in the primary schools between 1991-98 indicate a marked improvement in the quality of teachers. For example in 1991, 28% of the teachers in schools providing primary education were untrained. In 1998 only 10 % of the teachers remained untrained. The proportion of female teachers improved marginally during the same period. Compared to 560 female teachers (28.9%) in 1991, there were in 1998, 692 (31.7%) female teachers.

Apart from these, a significant effort has also been made to enhance the knowledge and skills of serving teachers through in-service training programmes. A comprehensive system of updating and keeping teachers abreast about the changes in curriculum and development issues have been instituted at the national level as well as the school level. A system for the Dzongkhag level was also tried out for two years but this was dropped due to difficulties for Dzongkhags to mobilize resource persons as well as financial support. Over 1000 teachers (over half of the total teaching force) are engaged in national workshops annually. These workshops are followed through at the school level in the form of School-Based In-Service Programmes (SBIP) where new methods and information are disseminated to the other teachers. The SBIP is also an important forum where teachers can share experiences and skills with their colleagues.

A distance education programme has also been instituted for serving teachers to upgrade their professional and academic knowledge through distance learning. Instituted in 1995, the programme at present has an enrolment of 60 candidates.

A recent survey conducted by the Curriculum and Support Section of the Education Division show that generally teachers are now more prepared to provide better quality teaching than they did erstwhile. While there is no baseline survey for 1990/91 to provide a comparative development scenario, the survey result of 1998 provides a very positive response of the teachers on their preparedness for schools.

The period 1990-98 saw major activities related to improving the curriculum content in each of the subject areas to make it relevant and meaningful to the Bhutanese children. This has been carried out within the context of achieving defined basic learning competencies at every grade of primary education. Not only was the content restructured and revised but a significant effort and resources were expended on improving the learning materials for children. A whole series of new and attractive supplementary readers were produced during this time. This was linked to teacher preparation through in-service programmes both at the national and school levels. The table below summarizes some of the highlights of these activities.

As planned, improvements in learning process were implemented within the context of the New Approach to Primary Education (NAPE). The new approach to education is widely credited for helping break the traditional chalk-talk method to activity related and a more effective learning system. Apart from helping enhance the learning process, NAPE is also credited for making the schooling process much more meaningful and enjoyable to the students. The NAPE system is now adopted throughout the whole primary education cycle.

Another significant step in helping to improve the teaching learning process is the adoption of a class-teacher system for the lower primary classes as a distinct improvement over the traditional subject-teacher system. In this new system, a single teacher teaches all the subjects in his/her class. Apart from facilitating the teacher to know the students better, the system also allows for flexibility in switching from one topic of interest to another and to show the interconnectedness of the education programme.

Related to this is also the adoption of a system of multigrade teaching to deal with situations when a teacher has to teach more than a class at the same time. This is an extension of the NAPE system which amongst others encourages ability groupings and peer interaction while learning. Amongst others, this method facilitates maximum students participation thereby motivating and improving the learning environment for the individual.

In line with a more responsive curriculum and a progressive teaching-learning strategy, there has also been significant changes in the students assessment and evaluation methods. The education programme in Bhutan traditionally provided for heavy reliance on end of year examinations. One of the main drawbacks of such a system was that this did not make adequate provision for the wider aspects of education such as those related to values and attitudes which are not easily amenable for testing and examinations. Moreover much of the technique applied served a summative purpose and did not really help in improving the performance of the teachers or the students. Therefore, since 1995, a lot of attention and emphasis is being provided to the development of a continuous assessment system throughout the year that caters to social and other important skills of students as well as serving an important feedback for both students and teachers who would use this process to improve themselves. The Primary School Certificate Examinations which was once a 100% pen and paper test has throughout the past decade been changed to a combination of continuous assessment by the school and external examination with 50% weightage being provided to each component.

Assessing the impact made by these programmes in improving the learning competence of students can be a rather complex exercise. However, it is generally believed that one of the proxy measures that can be used for this is through the improvements made in pass rate of students in different grades of the primary cycle. The Bhutanese education system presently adopts a rigorous testing and examination system at every class. This is complemented by a national level examinations at the end of primary education.

An analysis of the pass rates for Class VI students from 1991-98 indicate a steady improvement during the years under review. Compared to a pass rate of 65% in 1991, 90% students who have reached class VI in 1998 passed their national-level examinations.At face value, the above statistics gives the impression that the quality of learning competencies have improved over the years as represented by the pass percentages. But the reality is much more complex. First of all, in 1991 the Division launched a new system of examining which while considered as being much more reliable, also introduced the concept of standardizing the raw scores to allow for a fixed percentage (60-65%) of students to proceed to higher level of education. Later when the Division decided on a 50:50 internal: external assessment approach, the standardized scoring approach was only applied to the external examinations marks. Both these developments have made

The present study, picked the data for 4 years in order to compare the performance of students between 1989-1998. The first year refers to 1989 when 100% of the examinations was based on externally administered tests and the results were based on raw scores. The three other years relate to the last 3 years of the examinations when the examinations was based on a ratio of 50:50 internal and externally administered tests and the results was based on adding standardized external scores to the raw scores of the internal assessments. In order to make the results comparable, for these three years, the study considered only the raw scores of the externally administered examinations. The result of this is as follows:

It appears from the above table that between 1989-1998, there was a slight improvement in the performance of students in English and Science. A dramatic improvement in the History Marks is however refuted by the critics of the 1989 examinations, many of whom assert that the bad performance was due to bad question setting more than anything else. Furthermore, there is a drop in the performance of Dzongkha (by 15 points), Mathematics (by 2 points) and Geography (by 9 points).

From the above statistics, one is inclined to conclude that the quality of Education for the primary level has not improved over the years, if at all there is a marginal deterioration from the 1989 level. On the other hand the proportion of students proceeding from primary to junior high has increased from 65% in 1986 to 92% in 1998. This was as a result of the government's decision to enhance the basic education level from the prevailing class VI (end of Primary) to class VIII (end of Jr. High).

The 1998 Class VI Examination results further indicate that the general performance of students are better in the urban schools. This relationship is especially pronounced for English Language. To some extent this is also true for History, Geography and Science. Children studying in schools located in rural and remoter part of the country perform much better in Dzongkha than children in the urban schools. The better performance in English and other subjects (taught in English) in the urban setting may be related to the fact that children use much more English in the urban schools. The use of the language even extends beyond the school environment and may include their own homes, market and recreation areas. However, this is not without its cost. Dzongkha in the urban schools is particularly poor as is evident from the table above.

Comparison of the performance was also made for schools with boarding and without boarding facilities. (Please see table below). The general belief within the Education system is that boarding facilities enable children to receive extra tuition and supervised coaching which help enhance their academic performance. The results for 1998 show boarding schools faring less well than day schools. This however must relate to the other factors associated with the boarding schools. In particular, it is important to remind here that boarding schools are mostly confined to rural and remote parts of the country. A comparison of schools by availability of electricity, playfield and Science laboratories again indicate no appreciable difference between haves and have nots.

Availability of library books seems to be important for English language.

The professional support to the schools and teachers is also another important component which is crucial for improving the teaching learning processes in the schools. The Dzongkhag Education Officers (DEO) and the School Inspectors have always been responsible for providing such crucial support. However, because of the lack of adequate staff, this has been one of the most difficult and perhaps neglected aspects of the education programme in Bhutan. For example a DEO does not even have an assistant to help him in his tasks which also includes planning, administration as well as looking after new school construction programmes. Similarly, there are only 10 officers manning the Inspectorate.

A far reaching decision made recently in this regard has been to change the image and the role of the Inspectors to Education Monitoring Officers. In line with this, EMOs also receive help from qualified teachers and professionals who are appointed as focal persons to assist in their work. In 1998 there were 7 focal persons while in 1999 this has been increased to 21. By the year, 2000, there will be 53. These teachers will be able to help the DEOs and the EMOs to help guide and support the other teachers in their respective localities.

The CAPSS study mentioned earlier, attempted to assess the extent of support that teachers felt were required from the different support groups. It is hardly surprising that a large majority of the teachers felt that people from Headquarters and Dzongkhags should visit them more often. Also interesting was the feeling that the works of teachers are not recognized by those in authority.

One of the more recent developments to help improve the professional and other support to the schools is through the establishment of resource centres. This is at present only at pilot stage and is being implemented as part of the World Bank/SDC Second Education Project.