The Ministry of Education and Sports’ announcement of a Non-Formal Education (NFE) policy is aimed at filling up the yawning gap between regular schoolgoing children and the huge mass of people who are either not enrolled in school or are drop-outs because of socio-economic and conflict-induced hardships. NFE seeks to make literate those who have somehow missed out on school education. The new policy aims at imparting both practical knowledge and academic education, as well as providing life skills and information to all classes.

The sharpening of the students’ technical and vocational skills or their inherent talent is perhaps more important than acquiring bookish knowledge. A combination of both, formal as well as technical system, can be an ideal attempt, especially in Nepal where educated students have to remain jobless and look to the government for opportunities or go abroad as a last resort. Children out of the school system too need, first of all, to become literate and, at the same time, learn some skills to earn a livelihood. The 16-point NFE policy targets students from lower secondary to higher secondary education through open classes. This may be expected to help attain ‘Education for All’ and cent per cent literacy. In the past, too, there had been policy after policy designed to boost non-formal education, but the results have not been so encouraging. Unless appropriate policy is put into practice effectively, policy in itself alone does not make much of a sense.