The rebels targeted teachers for extortion and propagandizing their revolt; students for using as informers, porters, cooks, fighters and inculcating ideology; and schools for barracks, shelters, and gathering venues. Many teachers who didn’t support them were brutally killed, maimed, injured and displaced. Students were terrorized. Schools were closed.
Comprehensive Peace Agreement signed between the government and the Maoists on Nov 22, 2006 brought the decade-long armed conflict to an end. But the precious six years ensuing the declaration of the MDGs were lost to the conflict. The efforts of the government, the UN and the civil society to enroll and retain children in schools were marred by widespread violence.
The conflict began on Feb 13, 1996. Yet Nepal made a considerable progress in net enrolment ratio (NER) between 1990 and 2010.The NER was 64 percent in 1990 and 94.5 in 2010. However, behind the success lies the façade of high rate of drop-out. The NER slowed down, drop-out went up and quality suffered due to the conflict.
PRESENT SITUATION
‘Nepal MDGs Progress Report 2010’ indicates ‘Goal 2: Achieve universal primary education’ as potentially likely to be achieved by 2015. But given the pace of the NER growth, Nepal’s kaleidoscopic political landscape, inefficient bureaucracy, rampant corruption, dearth of committed fund from donors, political will power; emergence of armed groups, insufficient budget, plus over-reported NER are the ground realities.
‘Nepal Human Development Report 2010’ says only 17.2 percent female and 48.5 percent male of Tarai Dalits are literate. Just 5.2 and 19.2 percent of them have acquired secondary or the higher education. Likewise, 26.5 and 61.8 percent Muslim female and male are literate. Only 12.0 and 25.5 percent of them are secondary or the higher education graduates respectively.
The badly operating 26,773 pre-primary classes and early childhood development (ECD) centers need to be scaled up to 69,689 by 2015. It is most unlikely to meet the target and improve the quality of those centers. The stakeholders are clueless on the number of out-of-school children like conflict victims, street children, trafficked, domestic helpers, children with disabilities, and HIV and AIDS-infected and -affected.
The government should formulate long-term policies and development plans to give impetus to its painfully slow and disrupted development process. It should allocate 20 percent of the national budget and 6 percent of the GDP for education, end the lengthy and cumbersome process of releasing budget to schools, make education completely free, increase school opening days from 220 to 260 days and run schools in the Tarai during the day in summer.
It is futile to make plans for their enrolment, retention and promotion sans having data. A preliminary survey has found 12,000 people with disabilities in Udayapur district alone. It must be an eye opener for the government. Likewise, reaching the HIV and AIDS-infected and -affected children is extremely difficult due to stigma and discrimination.
THE MDGS AND THE SSRP
The School Sector Reform Plan (SSRP) has failed to address the core issues of out-of-school children and the drop-outs. The SSRP aims at increasing the share of education budget to 18.1 percent by fiscal year 2013/14. It won´t reach 20 percent even after 2015. Insufficient budget constrains programs badly needed to enroll, retain and reduce repetition.
The SSRP targets to achieve 95; 90 and 75 percent literacy rates by fiscal year 2015/16 up from the present 78; 76; and 50 percent for age groups 15-24; 6 plus years; and 15 plus years respectively. The sixty-four thousand dollar question is how can Nepal attain the goal of Education For All (EFA) by setting a target of 95 percent literacy?
The SSRP provisions Rs 350 in scholarship per year to all Dalit students. Inflation has remained double digit for the past few years. The trend is sure to continue, further weakening the purchasing power of the ultra poor. The plan provides scholarship to 50 percent girl children only. But almost all children who attend public schools are very poor.
The blatantly inflated NER data claims the percent of school-going children as 94.5 and there are no data on the hardest-to-reach groups. This defeats the very goal of providing education to all. Target 1 of Goal 2 states, “Ensure that, by 2015, children everywhere, boys and girls alike, will be able to complete a full course of primary schooling.” This means educating each child.
‘Civil Society Perspectives on Poverty and MDGs in Nepal’ published by the NGO Federation of Nepal states survival rate to grade 5 as 79.9 percent, citing a 2009 report of the Ministry of Education. High drop-out rate is linked with abject poverty, gender, caste, class, physical condition, geography and national policies. About 9.9 percent students drop out immediately after they are enrolled. They enroll just to receive school materials. The same students enroll next year, the report admits.
CHALLENGES
Burgeoning armed groups and potential eruption of ethnic violence in the aftermath of the failure to write a new constitution within a deadline and the inability of leaders to address the problems that arise thereafter, the incapacity of the government to spend development budget, to release budget on time, and spiraling recurrent expenditure make attaining the goal unrealistic.
Lack of visionary leaders, insufficient budget to meet the growing needs, absence of pragmatic policies and programs to enroll and retain children, skyrocketing prices of daily commodities, lack of teachers’ management, and the government’s failure to stem inflation among others force school-going aged children to stay out of school.
Poverty has multiple impacts on education. A family which cannot afford even two meals a day hardly sends its children to schools that do not provide day meal. Children suffering from malnutrition, chronic hunger, and having witnessed the siblings die from hunger and of easily treatable diseases like cholera and diarrhea are most unlikely to attend school.
Incoordination among the government agencies and the national and international non-governmental organizations (NGOs) has also been unsupportive to achieving the goal. There has been a huge misuse of financial and human resources due to duplication in work resultant of incoordination. Hence, the literacy campaigns carried out by the successive governments has failed to deliver.
Teachers are most crucial. But they are largely unaccountable. Teachers’ absenteeism is one of the biggest problems. Many are untrained. Trained don’t practice their learning. Most of them are unmotivated but politically active. Perhaps, Nepal is the only country to have 17 types of teachers in public schools. How can you expect quality teaching from myriads of teachers?
Incompetent school management committees (SMCs), lack of monitoring and evaluation, absence of schools within a walkable distance, and lack of child-friendly pedagogy and environment are other deterring factors. A large number of unfed children have to brave inclement weather and walk for 3 hours to be taught by unwelcoming teachers.
Token representation of women in SMCs, no female teachers though mandatory, lack of proper sanitation, violence against girls in, to and from schools, and malpractice of Chhaupadi in many parts of the mid- and far western regions also contribute to low enrolment and high drop-out of girls.
Short-term development plans are detrimental to the advancement of a nation at large and to education in particular. Lack of laws that bind policy-makers, implementers and government employees including teachers to send their children to public schools is another hurdle in attaining the goal.
Waiving users’ fee alone doesn’t render basic education free. The associated costs are manifold and very high. The opportunity cost has riddled the primary education. There are no policies for enabling the poor parents to educate their children and no legal provision for taking action against those who do not educate.
Lack of teaching in mother tongues at primary level, limited textbooks available in native languages, and absence of trained or native speaker teachers are other reasons behind low enrolment, high repetition and drop-out rates. Similarly, incentives like day meal and cooking oil are confined to a very few places, and scholarships are discriminatory.
WAYS FORWARD
The government should formulate long-term policies and development plans to give impetus to its painfully slow and disrupted development process. There should be legal provisions for ensured annual incomes of the poor parents to enable them to educate their children compulsorily.
Special outreach programs for the children with disabilities, religious and ethnic minorities, Dalits, conflict victims, street children, trafficked, domestic helpers and HIV and AIDS-infected and -affected should be introduced. Similarly, the government should allocate 20 percent of the national budget and 6 percent of the GDP for education, end the lengthy and cumbersome process of releasing budget to schools, make education completely free, increase school opening days from 220 to 260 days and run schools in the Tarai during the day in summer.
Ending extreme poverty and hunger, providing special care, treatment and diet to the HIV and AIDS-infected and -affected people, and special provisions for children with disabilities, religious and ethnic minorities and Dalits should be introduced. Fulfilling other MDGs is essential for achieving Goal 2.
There should be a strong mechanism for holding teachers, SMCs, parents-teachers’ associations and the stakeholders accountable for enrolment and retention of children, and a competent monitoring and evaluation body to weed out the ills of school education system.
There is a fallacy of poverty reduction and the contribution of remittance to the gross domestic product (GDP). First, the remittance contributes only 19 percent to the GDP. Second, you cannot reduce poverty or distribute income by simply dividing the national annual income by the number of people. We should do away with such a false notion.
To coordinate and collaborate with government agencies, national and international NGOs, forge public-private partnership, avoid duplication in work, channel funding directly to education, pool resources and investing productively, there is a strong need for founding a National Civil Society Education Fund.
ramsharan.sedhai@gmail.com
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