Kathmandu, February 26:

The Ministry of Education and Sports (MoES) is introducing the Open School Education Programme (OSEP) from the next academic year with a view to providing opportunity to those who have not been able to complete their school education due to various reasons.

The students having two years gap after passing their grade 8 are eligible for the open education programme and will be able to sit for the School Leaving Certificate examination next year.

The government is piloting the OSEP through distance mode in five schools of different development regions from Mid April 2007. The schools are yet to be fixed. Each school will have only 35 students. A total of 175 school dropouts will be benefited from this programme.

Balananda Poudel, secretary at the Education Ministry, told this daily that the new regulation on open education would pave way to those who had left the schools due to various reasons. “The open education will enable the students to pass the SLC examination,” said Poudel.

The Education Ministry recently endorsed the Distance Education/ Open Education Programme Operation Regulation-2063. As per the regulation, there should be an interaction between students and teachers at least once in three months.

The students will prepare for the examination through a distance mode with the help of study and reference materials provided by the National Centre for Educational Development (NCED). The open school will be equipped with all the necessary infrastructure such as audio-visual study materials and a library.

Mitra Nath Gadtaula, deputy director at NCED, said that the government’s plant to introduce the programme was yet to be materialised. “The programme will be implemented in community schools and will be expanded to all the schools. The government also plans to implement the programme in private schools as well,” said Gadtaula.

Since it is a pilot programme, the OSEP will be free of cost, said Gadtaula. The Asian Development Bank is supporting the teacher-training programme and OSEP is a small part of this programme. According to Technical Review of School Education in Nepal- 2006, the retention rate at lower secondary and secondary levels is 91 per cent and 93 per cent respectively, while it is 84 per cent in grade 1.