Himalayan News Service

Kathmandu, January 17

The M Phil and PhD fellowship programme, funded by the Danish International Development Agency (DANIDA) and the Nepal government, for the students at the Faculty of Education of the Tribhuvan University is to be discontinued from this year.

This move is expected to encourage local efforts to produce advanced level manpower required in the educational sector of the country.

Dr Min Bahadur Bista, co-ordinator of M Phil/ Phd fellowship programme said, the Faculty of Education now can conduct the programme on its own.

"Experts produced from within the country can be more effective to understand the national issues and context," said Bista. "The initial funding programme paved the way for us and now we can follow it."

The funding programme was introduced in 1999 with an objective to produce skilled manpower at the decision making level and to tackle the existing educational problems to implement the second phase of the Basic Primary Education Programme (BPEP) II which is to complete in July 2004.

Danish University of Education and Faculty of Education, TU jointly funded the programme in which five Nepali tutors were included.

While the M Phil programme in Faculty of Education of the TU is in the pipe, the M Phil course supported by the DANIDA and the Nepal government in the Kathmandu University, however, it to continue.

The Kathmandu University has till date produced five batches of M Phil scholars from the programme.

The M Phil course with the Danish support was partially taught in Denmark and Nepal — first semester in Denmark, second and third semesters in Nepal and the fourth semester in Denmark and there was a provision that the thesis was to be done on the educational problems in Nepal.