Kathmandu, November 25:

The National Curriculum Structure drafted by the Curriculum Development Centre (CDC) has failed to address the issues of adoslcence, said the health experts.

The CDC has completed the draft of ‘National Curriculum Structure 2006’

for the first time, which was recently released, but experts in the health sector has argued that the curriculum has completely ignored the health related issues crucial for adolescents to understand.

In the process of drafting the new curriculum under school sector reform programme, making it more a life skills based education, ‘Health Population and Environment’ a compulsory subject in schools, which gives education on infant and maternal mortality rate, child marriage, unwanted pregnancy, sexual and reproductive health

of youth, population growth and preventions is getting removed as a compulsory subject rather, very few of its topics would be merged into science and other subjects.

The new curriculum has completely undermined sexual and reproductive health issues including sexuality education and prevent adolescents in the country from getting information on these vital issues, said KP Bista, director general at the Nepal Family Planning Association and president of NGO Coordination Council (NGOCC).

The Millennium Development Goal (MDG) has aimed at empowering women and gender equality, reducing infant and maternal mortality rate, decreasing HIV/AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis cases and working towards sustainable environmental development by 2015.

“School education has played a very important role imparting information, knowledge and skills, and reducing vulnerability but neglecting the issue will be impossible to attain the goals,” said Bista.

He further blamed the ministry of education for not consulting the concerned experts prior to drafting the curriculum structure.

The FPAN through its youth information centers claims imparting sexual, reproductive health related information to more than 70,000 children out of school.

“Still there are thousands of children who are deprived from learning, how will it work?” questioned Dr Giridhari Sharma, deputy DG of the FPAN.

The experts blamed recent changes in the political settings that affected education sector, blaming for its implications. A task force has also been formed by NGOCC to lobby with the government to help prevent the exclusion of the subject from the curriculum.