Nepali educationists and political leaders always give lectures regarding the quality and relevance of education so as to cope with the 21st century knowledge world. However, they have not been able to provide any vision of education for building the future of the nation. It is because they themselves are not literate enough to talk about global competitiveness in education. We have our own limitations on the one hand and we have not been able to use the available technologies on the other. Many organisations are now competent in our context to use Information Technology (IT) in education. The only problem is the lack of government policy regarding this. The Ministry of Education and Sports (MoES) has not been able to adopt modern thoughts; it always seems to stress patchwork to mend past mistakes.

The officials in the MoES do not have a long-term vision for education. The example of the recent report of the Nationalism Education Committee has shown the intellectual bankruptcy among the committee members and officials of the MoES. The recommendations will not help promote education as a system; rather it has created confusion by insisting on royalist education, which is a copy of education in Nepal before 1991. Similar is the case with the Education Ordinance 2062 that has not been able to find ways to resolve educational crisis, rather it has interfered with the autonomy of educational institutions and organisations by centralising educational authority in the MOES. It is evident that the present government is incapable of dealing with educational problems.

Given the fact that Nepal has already entered the WTO and in a situation where education has been the main source of income of the developed countries, we cannot sustain by simply revising the age-old school curricula and talking about loyalty to the King. A child now enrolled in nursery would complete his/her Master’s degree in 20 years time. The nation then would get the service of the person as a skilled worker. So what kind of education should the child get in nursery today should be determined by the nature of competitive market after 20 years. Has the MoES demonstrated such vision in any of its plans and regulations so far? No; not in the past five decades. The period of 1991 to 2002 was appropriate to do this, but education was so politicised that real education could not flourish. As a result of this , a whole generation is now suffering, which is a great loss to the nation.

In order to make the Nepalis competent in the global market, it has already been late to introduce IT in education. Many organisations are now working for IT both in the government and non-government sectors. The technology and the service of these organisations can be easily integrated into formal and non-formal education sectors making Nepal’s education at par with the education system of the developed countries. For example, High Level Committee in IT has its programme for rural communities with 200 telecentres, which is expected to grow to around 1500 such centres in the near future. The Institute of Engineering has demonstrated its capability of video conference by telecasting live lectures from Japan to its students providing opportunities for them to interact with the professor during the lectures; the Faculty of Education has been running distance classes for its B.Ed. students for the past five years implementing best pedagogy; Nepal Telecom has the efficient connectivity facilities; the Ministry of Science and Technology has the capability and mandate to produce relevant policies regarding the use of IT; most of the private colleges have sufficient infrastructure to implement IT in education.

Tribhuvan University is planning to implement distance mode in all its higher education as support system to the students; the private business sector has shown its willingness to install necessary equipment and provide service; in fact, it has already demonstrated its capability in satellite connectivity. Besides these, the donor agencies are also equally interested in such activities in Nepal. Then what could be the problem in implementing IT in education on a national scale? The only problem is the policy to coordinate all these and integrate the available technology.

Who will bell the cat? It is the government that should show interest and give its support to all organisations with such capacity. The initiation must come from the MoES and universities. The MoES should raise itself a step forward from simply changing certain units of study in the curriculum. Rather it should think of using the available technology wherever possible. It is true that many villages are not connected electrically, but there are solar technologies which can be used as alternatives. Merely waiting to see the increase in capability of schools and colleges would lead us nowhere. So it would be wise to implement IT wherever possible immediately and then look for possibilities and alternatives to the inaccessible places gradually.

Dr Wagley is professor of Education, TU