KATHMANDU (UCAN) -- Schools run by Religious and lay Catholics continue to produce good results in the School Leaving Certificate (SLC) examination in Nepal, with one rural school outperforming the "best" school in the country.

All 16 graduating students of the school run by Notre Dame sisters in Bandipur, a village 135 kilometers west of Kathmandu, passed the SLC with first-division marks this year. The third class to graduate from the school thus kept alive its unmatched record of 100 percent first-division SLC marks.

"Our exam results have proven that village children do not have to go to town to do well, to excel in studies," Sister Janet Tanaka, principal of the school begun by her congregation in 1985, told UCA News.

"Especially the mothers and girls here are very confident now that there is hope of students standing on their own feet when they apply for colleges," the Japanese nun said, even though only two of this year's graduates are girls.

The second class to graduate from the school run by St. Joseph of Cluny Sisters in the eastern town of Damak also performed very well, with 31 out of 35 students passing in the first division and two in the second division.

The SLC results also contained an encouraging note for rural students countrywide in that the top scorer overall was a village student from a small school in Banepa, just outside the Kathmandu Valley.

Nonetheless, the results, announced in June, showed the usual large gap in performance between private schools and government-run schools in villages.

In many village schools, not a single student passes, and it is not surprising to find no SLC "graduate" in many remote villages of the country.

On the other hand, 294 students educated by Caritas Nepal in the Bhutanese refugee camps in eastern Nepal passed the SLC out of the 342 who took it, 98 with first division marks.

According to the announced results, 113,640 students took the April exam in Nepal, of whom 47.6 percent passed, a quarter of them in the first division.

Two girls' schools run by Mary Ward nuns in Kathmandu and Pokhara posted results just shy of those from Bandipur. All of the girls passed, with all but two from each school in the first division and the other four in the second.

Similarly, all 14 students of Navaprabhat School, run by a lay Catholic, passed the SLC, with two in the second division and the rest in the first.

Jesuit-run St. Xavier's School for boys in Kathmandu, cited as the "best school in the country" on Education Day, Feb. 24, 1998, by then Nepali prime minister Surya Bahadur Thapa, also posted good results, with 108 students passing, 78 in the first division, and three students failing.

There are few Catholic students in the Catholic schools, but all six Catholic girls who graduated from St. Mary's in Kathmandu scored in the first division and were asked to stand and applauded at the Sunday Mass at Assumption Church in Kathmandu, Nepal's only public Catholic church.

None of the graduating students from the school in Damak were Catholic, and there were no Christians among the St. Xavier's graduates.

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