Kathmandu, September 4 :

The Ministry of Education and Sports is planning to categorise public schools on the basis of certain criteria with a view to improve the quality of education and extend support accordingly.

The Department of Education (DoE) and Nepal Teachers’ Union have jointly prepared the Directive on Public School Categorisation and has forwarded to the Education Ministry.

The schools will be categorised in four major groups - Ka, Kha, Ga and Gha on the basis of physical infrastructure, teachers’ efficiency, school’s responsibility and transparency and school’s achievement.

The schools will be graded after the categorisation committee headed by district school supervisor approves the school’s self-evaluation form covering the teachers’ qualification, number of teachers, school environment, physical infrastructure, library facility, schools’ performance and scholarship provisions.

The schools receiving 80 per cent and above in self-evaluation will fall under ‘Ka’ grade, schools receiving 60 per cent and above will fall under ‘Kha’ grade, schools receiving 40 per cent and above along with those schools who do not participate in the accreditation programme will fall under ‘Ga’ grade. While the schools that receive less than 40 per cent marks will fall under ‘Gha’ grade and the DoE will take necessary actions aimed at improving the quality of such schools.

“Action, programme and support will depend upon the need of individual school,” said Mahasram Sharma, director at DoE.

“If all goes well, the programme will be implemented from next academic year.

Those who do not meet the standards will be supported and those with good performance will be given incentives to maintain their performance,” said Sharma.

Mohan Gyanwali, chairman of Nepal Teachers’ Association said that the categorisation would help analyse whether the 28,000 public schools are needed for the country or not.