Not many countries in the world are in educational crises. Some of them may have problems in some aspects of education but not all. In Nepal, the present education system neither guarantees academic and career path of the young generation nor assures minimum quality to compete in the market. The government of Nepal in the past attempted to cover this truth and signed unnecessary agreements with the donors. Donors have also failed to identify the real Nepali education problem before making investments. In other words, the donors are equally responsible for the deteriorating total education system in Nepal whether in the name of PEP, BPEP, EFA or SESP. Until today, all the donor agencies are following the “one size fits all” approach in the Nepali education system, whereas, in their own country they advocate just the opposite.

The investment in education by the donor community in the past two decades has been worthless. The increase in the number of school-going children is not the result of these investments. With the increase in the population, the number automatically grows. Increasing access to education comes from the awareness of the parents and not with the donors’ push. The mass media, print and audio-visual, and other informal means of communications have helped increase awareness of the people and not the workshops and seminars organized for a few people with the donors’ money. Whatever the money spent by donors in education, the dropout rate of grade one is still alarming, the cycle completion rate does not exceed 40 per cent, the achievement of students is still a main problem and the impact of such knowledge in social and /or entrepreneur activities is almost nil. Not only school education but the scenario of higher education is also not better. Although it is claimed 7 per cent of 18-24 age group join higher education, it is far less than that.

The equity aspect is also very gloomy. Ninety-nine per cent of the out-of-school children are from the disadvantaged, Dalit and Janajati groups. The number game of the Ministry of Education is very doubtful. Their claim of 92 per cent NER of primary education has not been justified by many other research done by NPC and UN agencies. The donors are very pleased to disseminate this inflated data damaging Nepal’s education picture. Donors evaluate education strengths based on the disbursement of money not the quality. The utilization of donors’ money to targeted programs is still in the crisis of legitimacy. Neither the government nor the donors have monitored whether the investments hve been rightly used, and in many cases they are misutilized and or unutilized. For example, the MoE received only 70 per cent of the committed funds from the donors in BPEP II (EU 2004). If one looks at different evaluation reports of BPEP II conducted by different donor agencies, the picture would be clear.

There are several anomalies among the reported facts. The report of the World Bank says everything was in place and improvements are there, the EU report says nothing was in place and no improvements made, and the joint donors’ report says something else. What is all mean? Whom are they fooling? The double digit educated unemployment and around 50 per cent underemployed and unemployed educated youths in Nepal are evidences of how relevant our curricula is in the 21st century. The relevance of higher education, especially Tribhuvan University, is in question where school level education is a major part of the program—that also without revising the curricula for almost three decades. What will be the students’ performance even if they secure 90 per cent marks in the aggregate? What is the use of HEP II signed by the government with the WB to improve higher education, especially of TU?

Education has not been tied up with the job market. Universities are busy within the four walls without doing a single piece of research. Professors are busy teaching part time in colleges and/or tuition centers. Capable ones have their own colleges working full time there and teaching once a week or none in their mother institution. Or they are engaged in consultancies for their personal benefit. The number of professors with research projects in their departments is almost negligible.

The quality issue is very alarming. The present investment pattern can not ensure quality. Neither can we do with the kind of human resources employed where most of the school and university teachers are more political cadres than educators. The Ministers of Education in the past several years have become below par personalities. The secretary of education is made out of political power-sharing and not related to capability. The bureaucrats are serving the political parties not the nation. In this context, talking about quality is a “cry in the wilderness”. Unless our ministers are educated and visionary and unless our bureaucracy is strong to plead with the donors and unless donors invest money on the basis of real Nepali need, we can not be hope for a better Nepali education system.