Kathmandu, May 29

The budget has stated that the local levels will pay the salary of school teachers who teach students from grade 1 to 10.

Education pundits today said the distribution of salary of school teachers and other resources by the local levels could add multiple complexities in secondary level education.

Educationist and Professor Bidhya Nath Koirala told THT that though the decentralisation of school education was good, it was, however, equally challenging because of educational and perceptional gap between teachers and newly elected local representatives. “The local levels may want to have some control over school education, which can generate conflict between school teachers and leaders”, he added.

Koirala also said that the new provision can lead to a situation where local level representatives could give undue advantage to their relatives who are teachers.

Professor Koirala also wondered why the government kept the major portion of the budget (Rs 36 billion) with the central government when the constitution had handed over secondary school management to local governments. He also said the government as well as ruling parties had failed to meet their commitment to allocate 20 per cent of the total budget to the education sector.

He also said that the role and responsibilities of the centre, province and the local government had not been mentioned clearly in the budget.

The budget also lacks clear policy and amount for the golden handshake for temporary teachers. According to Joint Secretary at Education Ministry Hari Lamsal nearly 50 per cent of temporary teachers out of 17,000, had chosen the golden handshake to permanent status.

CPN-UML lawmaker Gangalal Tuladhar said the budget was not clear about development of education. “It seems the government is trying to hand over the resources to local government, but they are not yet ready to take full responsibility.”

The budget has handed over the distribution of school teachers’ salary to the local government and resource management of school to the local government.