The speakers were speaking at a workshop jointly organized by UNESCO office in Kathmandu and Ministry of Education (MoE) on the issues of education to be addressed in the federal Nepal on Thursday. The speakers opined that the school education should be free of cost. [break]
Tap Raj Pant, National Program Officer in Education Unit, at UNESCO, said the federal constitution should incorporate inclusive and qualitative education that is accessible to all. “We have formed education and federalism support desk within the Ministry of Education to work on the best models suiting the federal structure of the country, which still remains unclear.,” said Pant, adding, “Whatever may be the number of federal states and the structures, the Ministry of Education will remain a model institution in the country so it is important that we facilitate and support the Ministry to come up with some models contributing for education service delivery in the federal states” . He further added that UNESCO Office in Kathmandu will hold discussions with political parties and the CA members as well to ensure that education sector in reference to federal structure remains a priority in their future agendas.
The under secretary at MoE Divya Raj Kattel painted a bleak picture that the international communities have often used Nepal as a laboratory to test every new experiments. “They [the international community] should understand that their models can not fit for Nepal as our society is indifferent to them,” said Katel.
Researcher Dr Pramod Bhatta said that there were no remarkable works done in the field of education at the initiation of political parties. “The political parties don’t give much importance to the educational issues. For them the political issues are everything and still they are missing the ground,” argued Bhatta. He further added that “education is of utmost importance, no matter what type of federal system Nepal accepts.’
Professor Rohan Edrisinha from UNDP said that it is the education which plays a key role in promoting integration and national unity. “The students should get free education till university level,” he opined.
He then went on to claim that the single identity-based federalism is disastrous as it ignores the rights of minorities. “Federalism in South Asia sounds negative connotation, and they [pro-federalists] are blamed as separatist.” He further added that the center always tries to hold maximum power than the provincial government to rule over the states.
Similarly, Rupesh Nepal project coordinator of the Education and Federalism project in UNESCO said that they would be looking for some international education models of different federal states. “Keeping in view education as a means of social transformation, we will support the government to develop inclusive, participatory and practical education model that best suits in federal structure.
Likewise, we will also look into the education models of alike federal countries in view of the best practices and the bottlenecks while planning effective delivery of education.” The education system should be a means to develop cooperative federalism, he added.
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