Private schools have opened after a two-week hiatus following Maoist threats to shut them down beginning the new academic session. The ban affected tens of thousands of students and several thousand teachers. The Private and Boarding School Association of Nepal and other well-wishers frantically appealed to the international community to pressurise those calling for closure to revoke the ban. Combined effort of organisations and individuals who extended help by urging everyone to open schools helped sanity prevail over the ban which has just been lifted. This column has argued more than once that the students do not deserve to be dragged into any kind of conflict. Schools are a peace zone and must be freed from any kind of fear. Else, education cannot be imparted and attained effectively. The stability equation, however, will cease to exist if the private schools start tampering with the agreed fee structure.

Along with the opening of the new session, the Ministry of Education and Sports has announced plans to issue identity cards for the marginalised and the displaced students in order that they may have better access to educational amenities the State offers. It is true that students from underprivileged groups are handicapped in accessing these facilities despite a surge in the flow of funds from within and without for the last 14 years. In recent times, though, the number of those unable to attend schools or those who need state assistance have fallen victims to insurgency and those who have been uprooted from their villages. The idea of issuing identity cards to cater to the under-represented is laudable. But people have grown suspicious of many promises like this because others rather than the ones — the poor and the deprived — take advantage of the facilities. It is for the State to ensure that the scheme such as this is not subjected to any kind of abuse, at any level.

It is unfortunate that the schools have been made the target of terror and intimidation in different parts of the country. Kidnap, abductions, rape, torture, killings and preventive detention are common occurrences, all of which have only contributed to generate an atmosphere of fear in the classroom. It has long been acknowledged by one and all that schools in rural areas are functioning under minimal infrastructure. All of these are responsible for the stagnant literary rate. These problems also constitute the biggest hurdles to literacy drives like Education For All. Textbooks and teachers too are in short supply. With strikes hampering for as long as 120 days in the 220-work-days academic year, it is important that student bodies and political parties left the education sector untouched in future.