Kathmandu, February 11:

The government has started consultations with the partner agencies from today on School Sub-Sector Approach (SSSA) to make changes in the current school level structure. Under this approach, the school level education will be divided into two parts — Grade 1 to grade 8 as primary level and grade 9 to grade 12 as secondary level beginning from 2009.

Education minister Professor Dr Mangal Siddhi Manandhar, Balananda Poudel, education secretary along with other department heads was represented at the first consultation meeting held at Education ministry today.

The representations of World Bank, Asian Development Bank, Finland, Norway, Denmark, UNICEF, JICA, Australia and European Commission were present at the consultation meeting.

“We have started the meeting with the partner agencies and discussed

on the concept of school education reform,” said Laba Prasad Tripathee, spokesperson at Education Ministry. “Today, we discussed the concept paper of school education reform programme and after thorough discussion the core document for the SSSA will be formulated.”

The government in its three-year plan has formulated that primary education will be from grade 1 to grade 8 and grade 9 until grade 12 will be a secondary level.

According to the three-year planning, grade 12 will be an exit point for schooling.

Tripathee said the programme would be piloted in the three districts namely Dadeldhura, Rasuwa and Kapilbastu immediately after consultations with partner agencies. The programme will be piloted in all the government schools from next year. The first phase of Education For All (EFA) programme will end by 2008.