Free education has declined the quality of education system in Bhutan

Education is globally recognized as a human right according to a number of international conventions. In

all highly developed countries most people would claim education should be free for children
worldwide. Likewise the kings of Bhutan also made termendous sacrifices and put in selfless effort to
provide free education in the country, realising the importance of modern education in nation building
and to improve livelihood of bhutanese. Although a developing country, the government has sufficiently
provided free education for the people as education is highly considered to be one of the development
goals for nation. His majesty the king states that “the future of our nation heavily depends on present
youths because having such opportunity to achieve highest quality of education and become capable of
serving for nation in future. Citations"

A completely free education system has results in a better informed society in Bhutan as equal
opportunities. Everyone has the opportunity to learn for free. But at the same time being a free of cost
people are viewing the education at low prospective and taking as it granted. Whereas most of private
educational institution are benefited financially and has gained high reputation from their well
performance. One of the reason for declining quality of education can be determined from number of
highly qualified teachers and infrastructures were less in the country..

In comparison to the past, the quality of education in Bhutan haven't declined instead it has been
steadily improving till now. In 1960, the education system was started with only 11 schools and 440
students. And in 2005, there were 14,188 students studying around the country which was managed by
4060 teachers. With this past history we can relate that being free of cost education didn't hampered
the quality of education and it has consistently improved over the period of time..Those who believe
that quality of our education has gone down must remember that quality is a complex phenomenon and
its definition is multi-dimensional (karma, etal, 1985, in Dorji, 2005, p. 180), and quality is, therefore, a
relative term and depends upon the situation and time in which the education system occurs (Dorji,
2003, p.180). Given the time and situation of our country, quality of education is comparatively high in
our country. Gyamtsho, (2006), also agrees that quality of Bhutanese education is already better than
most of the government schools in the neighboring countries.

When students sit in the class just for attendance and warming the bench, we can never expect the
quality of education to improve, rather it would deteriorate spontaneously. Thus, it brings down the
Quality of Education. School functioning without conducive environment is another reason why quality
of education is declining. For example, school like Gangzor Primary school in my village has no proper
facilities. No class room for class III students. The classes were overcrowded with no space for the
teachers to move through for active interactions.Another factor solely responsible for the decline in
quality of education is the students attitudes. They come to class without any interest in learning. As a
result, the quality of education declines. When we compare today's students to learners from previous
decades, we can see that today's students are less interested in school education.

Thus, the improvement in the quality of education is seen in the number of educated people in the job
market, in the increased developmental activities of our nation, better information and communication
technologies, better health facilities, high participation in the democratic process, more schools and
more qualified teachers and so on. All these paint a successful picture of our education system.