BHAKTAPUR, May 21: While public schools across the nation are being forced to shut down or merge due to unavailability of students, a community school in Bhaktapur has closed its doors to admission requests after the number of new enrollments exceeded the capacity of the school.
Bagiswori Higher Secondary School of Chyamasingh, Bhaktapur had previously allocated at most 400 seats for new enrollments but when the number of students enrolled reached 442 in mid-May, the school had to stop new admission.
Community school attracts too many students, fails to admit all
According to the Principal Krishna Prasad Dhancha, the admission process had to be halted after the number of new enrollments exceeded the allocated seats. “A secondary school could be run with the number of new students we have this year,” Principal Dhancha added, “Even if 40 to 50 students were to be taught in every grade, they (new students) could fill 10 grades.”
The school had taken in students of Early Childhood Development (ECD) to grade 9. As many as 101 new admissions (highest) took place in grade 9 and 13 new admissions (lowest) in Senior Kindergarten (SKG) this year.
The school has a total of 1,848 students in ECD to grade 10. A total of 3,203 students study in the school, including 645 in grade 11 and 710 in grade 12. If students from vocational background, evening classes and diploma are added, there are a total of 3,397 students in the school.
This year, 241 students from the school took the Secondary Education Examination (SEE). Last year, all the 201 candidates who took SEE secured results ranging from A+ to C grades. According to the District Education Office, Bagiswori is the school with the highest number of students in the district.
