The local levels must launch a door-to-door campaign to boost kids'enrollment in schools
Following the restructuring of the state on federal lines, education upto the plus two level and the management of the teachers are the responsibility of the local levels. However, the Federal Education Bill is in the process of being endorsed by the federal parliament.
The next parliament, which will come into force after the November 20 election, will discuss it, and the issues related to management of the teachers will be addressed accordingly. The teachers, who were hired under the existing Education Act, want to be governed by the central government, not by the local levels, which still lack the institutional capacity to hire and manage them. The proposed Federal Education Bill should be able to set standard criteria for the recruitment and management of the teachers for the secondary and plus two levels. While addressing a national level programme on sharing of learning on 'Education and Child Labour in Madhes Province', Education Secretary Ram Krishna Subedi said that although there was no obstacle in working in the education sector even without the Federal Education Act, it would further clarify the educational rights and responsibilities of the three tiers of government.
As per the constitutional provisions, the local levels are mandated to manage education upto grade 12 to ensure that maximum number of children are enrolled in the schools while reducing the dropout rate, which is the highest in Madhes and Karnali provinces.
In order to increase the enrollment rate and retain the students upto grade 12, the Madhes and Karnali provinces have launched the 'Protect Daughter, Educate Daughter' and 'Daughter Insurance' schemes respectively.
These plans have yielded some positive response in both the provinces, but much needs to be done to make it more sustainable. Madhes Province had also initiated distributing bicycles to the girls to keep them upto 12th grade. But this programme has landed into controversy due to the corruption involved while distributing the bicycles.
As per the 2021 national census, average literacy rate in Madhes Province is just 49.54 per cent whereas the average literacy rate in remote Karnali Province stands at 58.25 per cent. The national average adult literacy rate stands at 67.91 per cent. Students' enrollment rate in Madhes is just 53.3 per cent, whereas the national child enrollment rate is over 93 per cent. It means both the provinces need to make more investments in the education sector while giving more incentives to the children and their parents.
The reality is that most kids from the Dalit and marginalised communities in Madhes are out of schools, who ultimately end up as child labourers. Elected local level officials, particularly women and dalit women members in each ward, can play a crucial role in encouraging parents to send their kids to schools.
They should launch a door-to-door campaign at the start of the new academic session. The local levels can also introduce a rule under which those parents who do not send their children to school are deprived of any government service or facility they are entitled to. Apart from them, members of the civil society and media should also cooperate with the local levels to launch campaigns such as 'get children out of work and send them to school' to make positive interventions in improving the education sector.
Destroy mosquitoes
Just when dengue is fast spreading across the country and is threatening to become an epidemic, there has been an outbreak of Japanese encephalitis in Chitwan. So far nine cases of the disease, whose virus is carried by mosquitoes, have been confirmed in Chitwan, four of them in Bharatpur municipality alone. Since there could be as many as 300 hidden cases for every case detected, one could assume that there are already about 2,700 cases of Japanese encephalitis across the district. The disease is mostly seen in April-May and in September-October, which means extra vigilance is required for some weeks to come if its spread to other districts is to be prevented.
The symptoms of Japanese encephalitis include high fever, headache, vomiting and body aches, which are similar to dengue, thus complicating its diagnosis at the family level. Awareness is the key to preventing both dengue and Japanese encephalitis.
Since both diseases are caused by the bite of infected mosquitoes, though of different species, a nationwide campaign must be started at the ward level to destroy the breeding grounds of mosquitoes. For those at risk, vaccines against Japanese encephalitis are recommended.
A version of this article appears in the print on September 14, 2022 of The Himalayan Times.