Kathmandu, September 22

National Campaign for Education, Nepal, today handed over a position paper on Education Beyond 2015 to Foreign Minister Mahendra Bahadur Pandey to draw the attention of government towards priority areas in the education sector.

Receiving the position paper, Pandey said the recommendation of the NCE, Nepal will be a very helpful reference material for the Nepali delegates participating in the 70th UN General Assembly, which is going to approve Sustainable Development Goals for the upcoming 15 years.

The position paper focuses mainly on four priority areas — equity, inclusion, quality and lifelong learning — and other cross cutting issues such as education for sustainable development, education for global citizenship, gender and education and value education.

The position paper was developed by NCE, Nepal in coordination with the Ministry of Education, UNESCO and UNICEF after a national-level discussion among stakeholders such as civil society organisations, university professors and researchers, members of parliament and journalists on September 21 in Kathmandu.

The position paper talks about creating atmosphere for fair and equal treatment to all students, guaranteeing their safety, ensuring safe and gender-friendly school infrastructure, gender-sensitive curricula, learning materials and teacher training to address gender equality.

It also talks about defining quality education so that concerned stakeholders act to achieve quality learning outcomes, ensuring at least 20 per cent of national budget and six per cent GDP in education, drawing a policy with clear roles and responsibilities to ensure quality of education and provision of effective mechanism for the ongoing teacher professional development with the assurance of its reflection in learning outcomes.

Similarly, other issues in the paper included drawing up clear guidelines providing simple definitions of inclusion and ensuring both structural and functional inclusion to benefit the target groups such as children with disabilities, girls, children from marginalised communities such as Dalit, ethnic communities and others, developing clear policies and investing in non-formal education and blended learning.