Kathmandu, June 27:

With number of higher secondary schools ever increasing throughout the country, experts today called for a strong mechanism to make sure that the higher secondary schools offerred quality education to the students.

There are more than 200 higher secondary schools in the valley alone and 1,500 across the country.

“There are no parameters to check the quality of these institutes and no criteria that needs to be fulfilled to get an affiliation from HSEB,” said Ramesh Silwal, chief executive officer of the Golden Gate College.

“Infrastructure and qualified teachers are lacking in many institutions,” he said, adding, “In some cases cluster of these institutes can be found in a neighbourhood, contrary to the criteria that says distance between two schools should be at least 500 metres.”

However, Ram Bahadur Khadka, member secretary of HSEB says that the existing parameters to regulate higher secondary schools were adequate and quality was being maintained.

“Before giving the affiliation to the institutes, the infrastructure of the school and qualification of teachers are thoroughly checked,” he added.

Due to inadequate human resources in technical subjects like hotel management, tourism, computer science, journalism, bachelor’s degree holders are allowed to teach higher secondary students after screening their qualifications, he added.