Kathmandu, September 22:

The Department of Education (DoE), Sanothimi, has handed over the management of a total of 2,251 public schools in 60 districts to the communities, till date. Yam Bahadur Khadka, a section officer at the DoE said a total of 2251 public schools have already been handed over to the communities under the Community School Support Programme (CSSP). Of them 1,872 are primary schools, 273 lower secondary and 106 secondary schools. “The government has targeted to hand over management of over 5000 schools to the communities by April 2006 but the DoE will be able to hand over only about 4300 schools, Khadka said.

“Ongoing armed conflict and increasing cases of abduction of teachers and students have caused disinterest among the communities to take over the management of public schools, resulting in slow progress of the government’s programme,” said Khadka. “The DoE, however, is hopeful that the process of handing over schools to the communities, will gain momentum after October and has targeted to hand over 2000 more schools,” said Khadka.

The DoE informed that Rs 100,000, the government provides to the community, is just an incentive to prepare for transfering the school management after developing basic infrastructure. CSSP is one of the priority programme of the government and it is also thinking of providing more facilities to the teachers.

Regarding the misunderstanding related with teachers’ recruitment in such schools, he said, the government would provide extra facilities including monetary assistance to the community managed schools to pay the newly recruited teachers, as per their request and need. CSSP is a three-year pilot programme launched with the joint initiation of the government and the World Bank. The programme started from October, 2003, with handing over management of 232 public schools to the communities with an aim to enhance management of public schools by handing them over to the stake holder communities, as envisaged in the National Education

System policy 1972 and the Tenth Five Year plan, which targets to hand over management of over 8,000 public schools to the communities during the plan period till 2007.