Kathmandu, March 5:

In the wake of the Ministry of Finance’s decision to reject the proposal of the Ministry of Education and Sports to create quotas for 62,000 more permanent teachers, the Education Journalists’ Group today held an interaction on the status and need for the teacher’s quota.

Educationist Mana Prasad Wagle said, “The latest report presented by the Department of Education (DoE) states that the average student-teacher ratio in the primary level is 39.7:1 and the ratio in secondary level is 18:1.”

He argued that the MoES should present “some scientific grounds” to the Finance Ministry to ask for more teachers’ quotas. Wagle noted that the total percentage of female teachers in the primary, lower secondary and secondary levels are 25, 12 and 7 respectively and 24 per cent of the total primary-level teachers are temporary.

Mohan Gyawali, president, Nepal Teachers’ Association, said, “There is a need for Teachers’ Service Commission. Only the competent ones can deliver quality education.”

Shoved Ram Bista, deputy secretary at the planning branch of the MoES, said, “The MoES can manage the problem of student-teacher ratio by redeploying the teachers to remove unequal distribution.” Nirmal Hari Adhikary, a representative from the Ministry of Finance, agreed that more teachers were needed. “There is unequal distribution of teachers. We can solve the problem to some extent by redeploying them in vacant posts,” Adhikary said.

Janardhan Sharma, director general, DoE, said: “Though we are trying to make optimum utilisation of available resources, various practical problems are creating disturbance.”