Monthly Testing and Final Examination GPA in a Nepali Secondary School: Historical Cohort Differences and Associations With Self-Reported Learning-Related Factors

The purpose of this paper is to examine whether the introduction of monthly tests in lower secondary education is associated with differences in students' final academic performance, and to investigate associations between students’ self-reported behavioral and motivational factors and final GPA among students in the 2025 cohort. The study was conducted at Mount Everest Secondary English Boarding School across grade 7 to 10 in Belbari, Morang, Koshi Province of Nepal. This is a private school that introduced monthly testing as the tool to assist on student's learning from the year 2024. A quasi-experimental design was used, comparing the final examination GPA of the 2023 batch that had no monthly tests with the 2025 batch that experienced monthly testing.To examine associations between students’ self-reported learning-related factors and final GPA, a retrospective Likert-scale survey measuring six factors, i.e., study habits, motivation, anxiety, memory and retention, learning approach, and overall perception was given to current students asking them to recall their monthly test experience from the year 2025. Although Grades 7 and 8 showed modest positive trends in GPA and Grade 9 and 10 showed negative trends, independent samples Welch's t-tests revealed no statistically significant GPA differences between the two batches in any grade. The findings of correlation and regression analyses showed that study habits and motivation were the main self-reported learning-related factors associated with GPA in Grades 7 and 8, while memory and retention was significantly associated with GPA in Grade 9 of the 2025 batch. These findings suggest that no statistically significant differences in students’ final examination performance were observed between the cohorts, while students reported varying levels of study habits, motivation, and long-term retention in relation to monthly testing. The results offer practical insights for Mount Everest School and similar private institutions in Nepal to strengthen their monthly testing policy by aligning it with conceptual and exam-based testing structure design so that students’ reported learning-related experiences can be examined alongside academic outcomes.