Kathmandu, April 26

Seventeen community schools of Gokarneshwor Municipality in Kathmandu today organised a joint programme to mark the National Enrollment Campaign-2016.

During the programme, representatives from the Department of Education and leaders of various political parties distributed textbooks among 20 wheelchair-bound students of Khagendra Nawajiban Bishesh Sikshya Secondary School.

The programme was coordinated by Sahayogi Higher Secondary Resource Centre, which looks after 17 community schools in the municipality.

Speaking at the programme, Dev Kumari Guragain, chief, Monitoring and Planning Division, DoE, said, “The Ministry of Education is formulating a post-disaster reconstruction framework to expedite reconstruction of schools damaged or destroyed in the earthquakes last year.”

She further said there was huge number of primary teachers in schools in Kathmandu therefore the DoE was doing homework to promote those, who have the required qualifications to lower secondary level.

Rameshwor Phuyal, a lawmaker from the CPN-UML, said there was a need to change people’s perception of community schools. “Institutional schools and community schools in the country have prepared two types of citizens,” he said, adding, “Education should fill the gap between the haves and the have nots and various classes of people in society.”

Similarly, political leaders stressed on the need to increase education budget to 20 per cent of the national budget.

Puspa Raj Bhandari, a teacher from Suntakhan Secondary School, said the government had failed to distribute free textbooks to students.

“There are sufficient textbooks for Grade I to V, but textbooks for higher classes are not available in the market although the government’s 10-day free textbook distribution campaign is ending tomorrow.”

Textbooks for Grade I to V were printed and distributed by private printing firms while the textbooks for Grade VI to X were printed and distributed by government-owned Janak Education Materials Centre.