1. The performance of most public schools in the country, with a few notable exceptions, is far from satisfactory.[break] Many research reports indicate that teaching/learning taking place in public schools is grossly inadequate. Courses are not completed on time, and teacher absenteeism is high. There is no remedial support for weak students, no homework policy, and no system of regular assessment of students’ performance. It is small wonder that the performance of public schools in public examinations is much lower than that of private schools.
2. The profound distrust for public education among the general populace is growing with more and more parents opting for private schools for their children every year. This failure of public schools does not augur well for Nepal’s social stability and our new democracy. Public schools have been perceived in all democratic societies as the means to social mobility and reducing differences in income, wealth and opportunity inherited from the past. Access to an equal and high quality education should be the birthright of all children in Nepal, regardless of status or rank. It is therefore utmost important for the state to improve the quality of public schools. It means not only just allocating adequate resources to schools but also strengthening the government’s supervision and monitoring system and lending professional support to teachers. Unfortunately, one of the major problems confronting school education in Nepal today is the near collapse of the supervision and monitoring system. Handing over the management of the school to the community should not be an excuse for the government to withdraw from its guardianship and supervisory and monitoring role.
3. While we should welcome the way private schools have offered choices to parents and lightened the burden of the government, they cannot escape the blame for making schooling more expensive than what it ought to be. The government must bring out a policy to curb the revenue seeking nature of some private schools and prevent schools for being too commercialized.
4. In 2010, high teacher absenteeism, false reporting of students’ number by school managements, mishandling of government grants by schools management, nepotism, corruption in recruitment of teachers and headmasters have been reported. The government needs to come out very strongly to address the corruption that is growing in the education sector under political patronage.
5. Improvement in school curricula and the examination system, along with professional development of teachers to allow students’ active participation in the learning process, is perhaps one of the most important reforms needed in the education system in Nepal today. Not only should we do away with the present content-heavy curriculum, we should also greatly improve our teaching methods so that we can give our students more space in the classroom to think critically and analyze rather than passively accept whatever materials we present to them. Active involvement of students in classroom, besides enhancing the relevance of school education to life and work, will also make schooling a lot more pleasant experience than what it is now today.
Higher education
6. Tribhuvan University (TU) has grown to be too big and too unwieldy. Its leviathan size and over–centralized management have made it extremely inefficient. The effect of weak management is reflected everywhere, from disheartening campus buildings to the lack of calendar of operation. High teacher absenteeism, rampant student politics, almost open-door admission policy, inordinate delay in examination results, inertia and complacency among campus leadership, high rate of student dropout and failures are some of the more visible consequences of weak TU management.
7. It is urgent that TU encourages some of its bigger campuses to opt for autonomy or even independent status as deemed-to-be universities. Smaller campuses should be clustered around these new universities as satellite campuses. The Kirtipur Campus should be developed as the country’s elite university with merit-based admission policy and recruitment of high-quality staff. Research will be the flagship activity of this centre, and all faculties will be visible research-active individuals. This will be made possible by emphasizing research accomplishments in recruitment and promotion decisions, and by making resources available through government funding and international and regional cooperation.
8. Since the private-sector universities bring about greater diversity and choice for students, and serve as a powerful incentive for public universities to innovate and modernize, the government should adopt a policy to encourage more private providers in higher education. The state should, however, be aware that unbridled competition and market forces without adequate regulatory and compensatory mechanisms will lead to adverse consequences. The long-awaited Open University also needs to be initiated sooner than later to cater to the need of working men and women and those living in far-off places.
9. Once multiple universities come into existence, each university will have its own curriculum and academic system. It is, however, absolutely essential that the new curriculum avoids depositing loads of information uncritically in students, through didactic lectures as we do it now. Too often, our students are oversaturated with fragmented academic information and underexposed to the passion of knowing about themselves and their society. We have seen that many bright students in the university withdraw from intellectual work simply because they are lectured at so much, and asked to think so little. The new universities should undertake a variety of pedagogical approaches, such as seminars, research, tutorials, field studies, case studies, project works apart from lectures, and their aim should be to develop in their students strong skills, academic knowledge, habits of inquiry and critical curiosity about the subjects they are studying and just about everything else.
Kedar Bhakta Mathema is a former public servant, including being Vice Chancellor of Tribhuvan University and executively associated with the World Bank in Nepal, who concerns himself with education in Nepal.
(As told to Bibek Bhandari)
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