Karnali Views

JUN 05 -

Maheshwor Rijal

The quality of education in the Karnali region is in bad shape. Despite the huge amount of money invested by the government, INGOs and NGOs, promoting access to quality education for vulnerable and marginalised groups remains one of the challenging tasks. The academic year has already started, but teachers from districts outside Karnali have not yet returned to their respective schools from the holidays. And teachers belonging to the home districts are engaged in alternative businesses and seasonal occupations like collecting and marketing different non-timber forest products. Consequently, the ultra-poor mass of children have been deprived of their right to education.  Most of the schools are presently closed because a majority of children are forced to go collect herbs like ‘yarsagumba’ for their livelihood.

Progress has been little even if researches have been conducted and strategies have been made for ensuring a conducive academic scenario. There are countless problems in the overall education mechanism from the early childhood development level to the higher secondary level like poor academic and administrative management and leadership of schools and lack of ownership of education related stakeholders including parents, teachers and other line agencies. These consequently transform the schooling culture towards the direction of a de-schooling culture because of the irregularities of teachers and students, less monitoring and evaluation, inactive role of school management committees, geographical difficulties and seasonal migration of children.

More importantly, child and gender friendly teaching is rarely practiced even though teachers are trained to follow a learner-centred model of instruction. How is it possible to meet a 100 percent net enrolment rate at the primary level and achieve the global commitment of education for all by 2015 in this situation? This has been the reprehensible reality of Karnali since the Interim Constitution has guaranteed the right to free education up to the secondary level to every citizen in accordance with the provisions made in the law by the state.

I would not be wrong in saying that the overall education of Karnali has been quantity-oriented in terms of statistical and mathematical analysis as some of schools have enrolled fake children to get the per child fund and other facilities. Now, it’s time to revisit the current pedagogical practices by formulating Karnali-friendly educational plans and policies and by addressing the capacity building of school management committees, the massive absenteeism rate of teachers, parental education for raising awareness, result-oriented monitoring and evaluation. Then the day will come soon for all the ultra-poor and vulnerable children to get educational opportunities on an equitable basis.

Posted on: 2014-06-06 09:13

(Published in The Kathmandu Post on 2014-06-06  http://www.ekantipur.com/the-kathmandu-post/2014/06/05/editorial/postplatform--karnali-views/263619.html )