Moreover, almost six dozen public schools, spread across the three districts of the valley, are on the verge of shutting down due to the insufficient number of students. In the recent times, people have shown a remarkable inclination towards English-medium private schools, worsening the predicament of public schools. [break]
"Most of the people who migrate from villages to gulf countries learn the importance of English; and tell their wives back home to enroll their children in private schools," says Harihar Dhital, who works in the Public Schools Section at District Education Office (DEO) in Lalitpur. "As a result, more students are flocking private schools by the day, deserting public schools."
In Lalitpur district alone, seven primary schools have shut down, though the DEO is yet to officially scrap their registrations. According to Mahesh Sharma, Under Secretary at the DEO, 15 teachers, with permanent postings, had to be transferred to some other well-functioning schools recently.
Similarly, five schools in Bhaktapur and three in Kathmandu have closed down with the number of students enrolled decreasing to zero. "The main reason for the closure of these schools is the growing interest of people towards private schools," Dev Kumar Baral, Under Secretary at the DEO, Kathmandu, said.
According to Rajan Niraula, Under Secretary at the DEO, Bhaktapur, of the total 136 public schools in the district, more than 50 schools have less than 50 students in primary levels. In Lalitpur and Kathmandu, too, there are almost two dozen schools with very few students at primary levels.
"These schools will shut down sooner or later," said Niraula. "Management committees of all these schools say they are trying their best to attract more students. However, with the trend of opting for private schools catching on among students, they have a grim prospect ahead. A few of them might be able to get more students, but not all."
Waiting for merger
In its School Sector Reform Program (SSRP), the government´s much vaunted plan aimed at overhauling the country´s education system, the Ministry of Education (MoE) has drawn out plans to merge those public schools, which do not have sufficient numbers of students, with the ones which have, if they are in the vicinity of each other.
However, no serious work has been done so far to merge poorly run schools with resourceful ones. Despite the lack of a formal program by the MoE, as envisioned in the SSRP, some steps have been taken in that direction. For instance, the DEO merged two poorly operating primary schools in Kathmandu´s Jyatha this year. Today, the merged schools stand as a single entity and known as Baal Ujjwal Baudhik Bikash Primary School.
"We can not sustain too many poorly-managed schools any longer," Hari Prasad Lamsal, Under Secretary at the MoE, told Republica. "The impact is very nominal when we distribute resources among too many such schools. We should merge them at the earliest."
However, the merger of schools is easier said than done. It is mainly because of the rigidity demonstrated by almost every community. "Schools are associated with the prestige of every community and they are against losing them," Baral said. "To convince every community before merging their schools is a very daunting challenge."
The need for merger of schools is not only in the valley. Though there is no official data, hundreds of schools, mainly primaries, are believed to be in the need of merger. According to the Department of Education (DoE), the schools in the country are short of almost 40,000 teachers. On the contrary, there are some 12,000 teachers redundantly placed. The problem of the lack of teachers as well as redundancy can be solved to a great extent by merging schools and transferring teachers to where they are needed the most.
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