KATHMANDU: Department of Education, Rato Bangala School Family and education stakeholders of Dailekh district recently launched Dailekh School Project (DSP) to enhance the quality of education in Dailekh. The DSP, a five-year long project, started at the beginning of this academic session with an objective of improving the standard of education in the schools of Dailekh district.

Talking to The Himalayan Times, Min Shahi, coordinator of the school project, said the project was launched in the district after their pilot project of Rato Bangala Partnership in Outreach Programme, launched in 10 schools each in five districts — Dailekh, Makawanpur, Dhading, Myagdi and Lalitpur— showed Dailekh schools needed more support.

“The people of Dailekh district were more enthusiastic and wanted to improve their standard of education. Therefore, we decided to launch the project in Dailekh with the support of the locals to upgrade the education quality in the region,” said Shahi. The project will provide hands-on training to 1,922 primary level teachers of the 452 public schools in Dailekh. More than 64,000 pupils of the district are expected to benefit from the project.

“It is the sole responsibility of the government to uplift the quality of education in public schools, but they are not being able to take their projects to the grassroots level,” said Shahi, adding that the education projects of the government lacked proper monitoring . He added that practical training to teachers as well as other stakeholders was part of the project. He said the project had a complete monitoring mechanism to make it more effective.

He stated that the project had completed a baseline survey of 452 schools in Dailekh. According to Shahi, Rato Bangala allocated a minimum budget of Rs 5 million per year for the project. He said the government was yet to approve additional funds for it.