Mana Prasad Wagley

Nepal has gone through several experiments in curriculum reform but they were only superficial, wasting resources.

Twenty-first century education has been a dream to many countries including Nepal. These countries are poor and cannot afford the infrastructure needed to install appropriate technology nor do they have the skills and knowledge to face this challenge. Though foreign aid is pouring in these countries, their basic education has never improved. Nepal, Bang-ladesh, India and Pakistan in South Asia are examples. Be it BPEP in Nepal or DPEP or Sarba Siksha Abhiyan in India, it is to provide access to education for all children from 5 to 9 years.

But the curricula they follow are traditional, the teachers they deploy are less qualified and the financing to schools means only teachers’ salary. Recently, there have been some attempts to provide development money to schools directly but the amount is very small. Unless there is a 70 to 30 ratio between salary and non-salary items of budget in primary schools development is impossible. The EFA campaign in many countries of the world will not become successful because of this financial crunch. The international commitment on basic education of poor countries is also limited to small scholarship, some textbooks and nominal materials.

As in other poor countries, Nepal tries to introduce reforms in education by changing its school curricula every five years. Moreover, the curricular reform becomes an agenda of the government when some political changes take place in the country. Nepal came up with major curriculum reform in 1971, 1982, 1987, 1992 and the process is on in the CDC, which already revised grade one and two curricula in 2004 and 2005. And it is going to reform curricula of other grades doing one grade each year. In three and half decades the condition of education in Nepal has deteriorated, the products have been incapable of competing with their counterparts outside the country.

After February 1, the Ministry of Education has been talking about curricular change in schools. What kind of curricular change does the ministry want? Has it come up with this conclusion after discussing in detail with its stakeholders? Does it have database of the countries that have succeeded in changing curricula towards 21st century society? There are several things to consider while reforming curricula. Among them the most important elements to be considered are ICT infrastructure, curriculum and teaching pedagogy and capability and professional development.

The first requirement of ICT indicates the necessary infrastructure to allow transformation to be effective, efficient and robust as is technically possible and is in place for all schools. The second requirement indicates providing a curriculum framework that allows for the development of knowledge-age capabilities and with an emphasis on powerful learning and assessment, and that teachers and administrators are made fully aware, in an ongoing manner, of the teaching practices that will be necessary to facilitate the development of these skills and knowledge. This task includes curriculum development, national assessment and accreditation of student management systems.

The third requirement of professional development indicates that schools should have the capability of delivering a curriculum that provides the knowledge, capabilities and attitudes required by the 21st century learner and that educators and administrators will be provided with the necessary upgraded skills and resources to make this transformation successful. This requires ICT clusters and digital learning systems in schools and MOES/DOE.

In order to prepare our students for the 21st century, a balance of foundational knowledge (just in case) and skills and processes (just in time) which will allow them to access information and process it into understanding independently and interdependently, is required. These combine to provide students the capability for lifelong learning. Increasingly there is an expectation that services are available to anyone, anywhere, anytime indicating that the Internet information around the globe is going to become the prime tool of information.

Knowledge NET will become the dominant teaching, learning and reporting environment within which teachers, students and parents will work. Unless curriculum reform is made in these directions the attempt will be worthless. Nepal has gone through several experiments in curriculum reform but they were only superficial thus wasting huge amount of resources.

Let’s look at the examples of some Asian countries. South Korea, Singapore, and Taiwan have implemented far-reaching national “master plans” to install high-speed computers in schools, train teachers to bolster their lessons using technology, and encourage students to conduct online research and develop online projects. But other, poorer countries such as Nepal, Bangladesh, Laos, and Mongolia lack such efforts. China, India, Japan, the Philippines, and Thailand are somewhere in the middle of the educational technology spectrum.

The MOES should learn lessons from abroad since most of the MOES officials go abroad each year spending millions of rupees. Unless we are able to reform our curricula in this global context, simply changing contents and textbooks will never serve the purpose. So it is high time for the MOES to think seriously before making any move towards curriculum reform.

Dr Wagley is professor of Education, TU