Renu Kshetry

Kathmandu, February 22:

Though Nepal has been celebrating the National Education Day on Falgun 12 (February 23) for the last 30 years, there has been no real progress. Education programmes have largely focussed on slogans than on providing education to the internally displaced students due to the insurgency. Professor Dr Mana Prasad Wagley said the government has not kept record of such students. “Instead of slogans, there is a need for programmes for them if the Education For All (EFA) goals are to be achieved within the stipulated time of 2015.”

Wagley added, “If we fail to provide education to these students, then the EFA goals will be beyond our reach.” Much emphasis has been given to slogans. During the first decade, the slogans concentrated on ‘accessibility’, later on they focussed on providing skill-oriented and technical education. From 2002, it was on declaring educational institutions as ‘zone of peace’. And this year’s slogan is ‘Violence-free educational institute is demand of all’ and ‘Education for all to live and sit together’.

This does not mean the gover-nment has not done anything for the conflict-hit students. It has allocated a Rs 10 million budget, especially meant to address the impact of conflict on education effective from this academic year. However, MoES is still confused over where to begin and how to utilise the budget as it lacks data regar-ding the impact of conflict on education. And due to this, programmes meant for conflict-hit students have not begun. Besides this, the School Grant Implementation regulation states conflict-hit students are to be provided a scholarship of Rs 7,200 yearly each. But who are these students? There is no basic criteria to identify them. As such the scholarship remain unclaimed. The Department of Education (DoE) states around 3,000 teachers were displaced affecting 150,000 students this year alone, while INSEC claims 64 students and 15 teachers were killed. MoES spokesperson Laba Prasad Tripathee said the ministry is drafting a programme for conflict-hit students. Admitting MoES lacks an exact record on internally displaced students and number of schools shut down, he said the government has recently ordered District Education Offices to keep the records. Chief of Women’s Education Unit at DoE, Ram Piyari Shrestha, said DoE is planning to start a campaign during enrolment from this academic year to increase student enrolment rate. Under this drive, students will be provided incentive packages during enrolment.

The data in the Nepal Living Standard Survey released by the Central Bureau of Statistics differs from that of DoE’s recent flash report. CBS states the net enrolment rate (NER) of primary-level students is 72 per cent, while DoE puts it at 84.2. Though DoE shows NER increment of 0.7 per cent, it will take another 20 years to bring all students to schools. According to the figures, 16 per cent of students are still out of schools, which is two per cent less than last year’s.