I am contemplating a discrete apolitical union in the private schools that encompasses both teaching and non-teaching staff. It does not have to recognise any national level teachers' union
This write-up advocates for the teachers working in private schools in Nepal. I have been teaching in various private schools in Kathmandu for over 15 years. Private schools account for 20 per cent of the total schools in Nepal, and their students outnumber those of government schools. Private schools are reckoned as the bastion of quality education in the country. Yet, teachers working there are shown the least consideration by the government, much less by the private schools themselves.
There are private schools which are truly not generating good revenue. So, it is understandable that they pay teachers a meager salary. However, paying somebody a relatively low salary for their day job is not a good thing per se as it is against the norms of international labour laws. So, the question is, why does the government grant permission to such schools to operate if they cannot generate enough revenue to run them without being unfair and unjust to a component of the society?
Giving the go-ahead to run a school means that the school is unquestionably supposed to provide fair salaries to its staff as per the government prescription. Had it been the case, there wouldn't have been a narrative that there are mushrooming private schools in Nepal, and the government wouldn't have had to stop registering new schools.
In addition to this, had it been the case, there would have been schools in our country being fair to all quarters – students, teachers and school owner(s). But a sad reminder is that here one quarter is happy at the cost of another's unhappiness. This trend must stop.
Good infrastructure and desirable revenue collection notwithstanding, some schools exploit teachers by providing paltry low salaries with no perks and benefits. What is more agonising is that they make teachers work like a horse! A shudder goes down my spine at the thought of a teacher taking seven classes a day just to draw a salary of Rs 10-15,000. Such schools are more prevalent outside the Kathmandu Valley in various metro and sub-metropolitan cities.
I am in communication with some private school operators and their executives both inside and outside the Kathmandu Valley. In our normal course of conversation I tend to pick their brains. It enables me to know the unscrupulous ways of running a school in Nepal. School owners go to rather ugly lengths to impress the guardians, thanks to the cut-throat competition among private schools. Teachers are inevitably at the receiving end along the way. The government is a mute spectator.
Owing to the unhealthy competition among the schools, quality education takes a back seat. Their sole aim is to lure guardians into having their wards enrolled in the school and continue to lure them enough to retain the students. A school I recently visited in a sub-metropolis outside the Kathmandu Valley uses misleading and deceptive advertisements through its Facebook page. It ostentatiously displays its futuristic multi-story building at the background of almost all photos on social media.
I was taken aback when I took a look of the building's inside. The owner of the school was clearly saving the cost of building construction by compromising on students' safety. Its stairs were without railings. Moreover, it didn't have any windows and doors installed on the walls of the classrooms, thereby allowing the noise of one classroom to permeate another. This would ultimately put a strain on the teachers' vocal cord because of the snowball effect of noise formation.
Considering the sorry state of the teachers in institutional schools, the only thing that can come to their rescue is their bona fide unity. Yes, I am angling at teachers' unions. They have a bad reputation because of their political affiliations in Nepal. But I am contemplating a discrete apolitical union in the private schools that encompasses both teaching and non-teaching staff. It does not have to have recognition from any national level teachers' union, such as Institutional Schools Teachers' Union (ISTU). So long as the teachers working in a private school have bona fide unity, no power can chip away at its strength.
In such a situation, ISTU and the likes of it will have reasons to be more active and altruistic for the school. I have attended many district level programmes of ISTU, and I have found the number of participants ever more dwindling. It is futile to expect any help from such an organisation until there is robust unity among the teachers within the school itself. It's perfectly legal! If it weren't, why would the private school owners themselves have their right protecting bodies such as PABSON and N-PABSON?
I want to give an example of the school I once worked for in the past to shed light on how an assertive and resolute union of all staff can be beneficial to both the institute and its employees. The teachers' union saw its heyday in that school for a good many years, and the parents' review about the school was very exciting.
Later, some of the teachers, who were the signatories of many past achievements of teachers' rights, happened to leave the institution while some other teachers sold their soul to the devil and started to toe the management line. Its academics then started to be in tatters. The morale of the teachers was at an all-time low. There was groundswell disenchantment among the parents about the dismal performance of the school. It is only a matter of time before the institution crumbles like a house of cards. Downtrodden teachers cannot produce good students, and conscious citizens by extension. Whosoever gave birth to the notion of workers' union deserves kudos.
