Challenges and solutions to Nepal's education problems!

An article in My Republica yesterday has raised just about every question you would want about the pathetic attempts to improve Nepal's education system. Written by Ram Sharan Sedhai it is initially based on Nepal attaining one of the essential Millennium Development Goals, "Universal Primary Education", and the fact that this is highly unlikely by 2015 as proscribed. Mr Sedhai has pulled no punches and speaks out against poor leadership, a lack of teacher training, incorrect pedagogies applied, budget mismanagement and inadequate policies, poor resources, and a distinct lack of coordination between government, charities, INGOs, NGOs, businesses etc.

I have summarised his key points below and it is heartening to note that he has offered solutions as well as being critical. I have extended an invitation to meet up with him during April and will post again when I hear from him.

If you want to read the article in full click Republica and you can email the author at ramsharan.sedhai@gmail.com

The Challenges

1. A lack of visionary leaders which in turn leads to insufficient budget to meet the growing needs, absence of pragmatic policies and programs to enrol and retain children in school, a lack of teachers’ management, and the government’s failure to stem inflation among others force school-going aged children to stay out of school.
2. Poverty has multiple impacts on education. A family which cannot afford even two meals a day hardly sends its children to schools that do not provide a day meal. Children suffering from malnutrition, chronic hunger, and having witnessed the siblings die from hunger and of easily treatable diseases like cholera and diarrhea are most unlikely to attend school.
3. A lack of coordination among the government agencies and the national and international non-governmental organizations (NGOs). There has been a huge misuse of financial and human resources due to duplication in work resultant of such non coordination. Hence, the literacy campaigns carried out by the successive governments has failed to deliver.
4. Incompetent school management committees (SMCs) resulting in a lack of monitoring and evaluation or school governance.
5. Teachers are most critical but they are largely unaccountable. Teachers absenteeism is one of the biggest problems, many are untrained and most are not motivated to put into practice what they have learned.Most of them are politically active.
6. A lack of child-friendly pedagogy or child centred learning methods applied.
7. Token representation of women in SMCs, few female teachers though mandatory, a lack of proper sanitation, violence against girls in, to and from schools. 
8. Waiving children's fee alone does not render basic education free. The associated costs are manifold and very high. The opportunity cost has riddled primary education since there are no policies for enabling the poor parents to educate their children and no legal provision for taking action against those who do not educate.
9. A lack of teaching in mother tongues at primary level, limited textbooks available in native languages, and absence of trained or native speaker teachers are other reasons behind low enrolment, high repetition and drop-out rates. Similarly, incentives like day meal and cooking oil are confined to a very few places, and scholarships are discriminatory.

Solutions & Ways Forward

1. The government should formulate long-term policies and development plans to give impetus to its painfully slow and disrupted development process. There should be legal provisions for ensured annual incomes of the poor parents to enable them to educate their children compulsorily.
2. Special outreach programs for the children with disabilities, religious and ethnic minorities, Dalits, conflict victims, street children, trafficked, domestic helpers and HIV and AIDS-infected and -affected should be introduced. Similarly, the government should allocate 20 percent of the national budget and 6 percent of the GDP for education, end the lengthy and cumbersome process of releasing budget to schools, make education completely free, increase school opening days from 220 to 260 days and run schools in the Tarai during the day in summer.
3. Bring an end to extreme poverty and hunger, providing special care, treatment and diet to the HIV and AIDS-infected and -affected people, and special provisions for children with disabilities, religious and ethnic minorities and Dalits should be introduced.
4. There should be a strong mechanism for holding teachers, SMCs, parents-teachers’ associations and the stakeholders accountable for enrolment and retention of children, and a competent monitoring and evaluation body needs forming to weed out the ills of the whole school education system.
5. There should be complete coordination and collaboration between government agencies, national and international NGOs, public-private partnerships, to avoid duplication in work, to channel funding directly to education, to pool resources and invest productively. There is a strong need for founding a National Civil Society Education Fund.