KATHMANDU: Janak Education Materials Centre (JEMC) on Friday claimed that it had already completed the publishing and supply of textbooks required for different schools for this academic season. It also informed that it had already started publishing of textbooks for next academic season.

Speaking at a press meet organised by Education Journalists’ Group here on Friday , Manohar Lamichhane, chief of textbooks distribution department at the JEMC, said it had already supplied 26.79 million textbooks to different parts of the country. “We have already made the textbooks available at different parts of the country. But the demand was more than what we had expected. We still have more than 3.6 million textbooks of different grades in our store. We can distribute it wherever there is demand,” Lamichhane added. He also informed that the JEMC had already started publishing textbooks for next academic season.

According to Lamichhane, the JEMC generated a revenue of Rs 580 million by selling textbooks last year. “This year we have already generated Rs 800 million,” he added. He, however, conceded that the JEMC could not supply textbooks to some parts of the country because of bandh and other strikes.

Not only the JEMC, private sector publishers, too, have already completed printing textbooks and supplying them to required areas. Uddhav Prasad Poudel of Roshan Offset Printers said they had already supplied three million textbooks to more than 30 districts.

“We have more textbooks in our stock. But the Publication Management Directives do not allow us to sell textbooks after stipulated time. However, the JEMC can sell textbooks throughout the year,” Poudel said. He also demanded the concerned authorities to give some facilities for the private publishers too. Krishna Prasad Khanal, another private publisher, also underscored the necessity to provide equal facilities for government and public firms while publishing textbooks.

Suprabhat Bhandari, president of the Guardians’ Association of Nepal, stressed on the need to provide textbooks to students on time. “Shortage of textbooks is one of the reasons that affects the academic performance of the students,” Bhandari added. He said that the Ministry of Education should be responsible to check the irregularities in supplying textbooks and ensure that textbooks are supplied on time.

Speaking on the occasion, other education experts said that textbook scarcity had not been felt this year as compared to previous years.

Govt pledges to reform educational sector

KATHMANDU: The government has planned to introduce an ambitious plan for educational sector reform starting July 16. The five-year School Sector Reform aims at improving the quality of education in schools throughout the country.

The plan will be implemented in two phases. While the first phase to be implemented by 2012 would focus on improving the quality of education in the lower classes, the second phase 2012-2015 would focus on secondary education.

“The main objective of SSR is to transform the education system as well as to produce highly skilled students,” Dr Vishnu Karki, deputy team leader of Education Sector Program at the Ministry of Education (MoE), told The Himalayan Times.

Stating that SSR was a continuation of Education For All (EFA) which would end this year, Karki said, “The EFA could not achieve the desired goal due to the lack of appropriate laws and government policies. Hence we will amend the existing educational laws for educational sector reform through SSR.”As per the SSR, education up to grade VIII

and VIII upwards have been classified as basic and higher education

respectively.

“We are also planning to change the examination system in a bid to earn

international recognition for our education,” Karki said, adding that district-level, regional-level and national-level examination would be conducted for grade VIII, X and XII respectively.

The total budget estimated for the SSR is 2.6 million where the MokE would get less than 20 per grant from donors while the remaining would

be provided by the

government.