By Our Correspondent
Ilam, Feb.1: Suryodaya Municipality of Ilam has made huge progress in education sector in a short period. The municipality which is rich in tourism has also launched different campaigns to improve the quality of education and materialise its plans.

The municipality has made its schools technology-friendly as time demands. In order to make public schools competitive with private ones, the municipality is working to improve the quality of education by expanding the technology in all community schools.

The municipality has expanded internet, introduced e-attendance, computer lab, science laboratory, e-library, and interactive board and student-parent identity cards to run schools.
Yoganidhi Bhattarai, education section head of the municipality, said that the municipality has started distribution of identity cards to the parents of students. According to him, the identity cards have been distributed with an objective to keep the record of students in such parents' cards. According to Bhattarai, parents should visit school compulsorily four times a year to know regularity and learning achievement of their children.

Arrangement has been made to send the report of students and guardians to the municipality office after being approved from the schools' headmasters. The municipality will reduce the facilities to students if the parents fail to visit their children's school four times a year.

According to the data of the municipality, a total of 11,225 students are studying in 66 community schools in the municipality including secondary and basic schools. The figure shows 60 per cent of the students of the municipality are studying in community schools.

The work of managing computer lab, e-attendance, e-library, science laboratory and internet in remaining schools is going on in full swing to make technology-friendly in the schools for educational reform.
A model building and computer lab had been constructed at Fikkal Secondary School in Fikkal at a cost of Rs. 45 million last fiscal year. The school's additional physical infrastructure development has been done at Rs. 7 million investment in the current fiscal year.

Ganga Bahadur Mahat, headmaster of the school, said more than 900 students are studying in this model school. "Schools should have an environment where teachers can teach and students can learn happily. We have created that environment," headmaster Mahat said.

Similarly, the municipality has an educational centre at Karfok where training class, computer lab, playground, hostel, teacher accommodation building and technology-friendly teaching classroom have been constructed. It has also run only one campus of the centre.

Scholarships have been provided to 120 students under the daughter-in-law education programme run by the municipality at Karfok Bidhya Mandir.
Mayor Rana Bahadur Rai informed that the city had already approved the local curriculum of class 1-8 and implemented now in class 1-5. Computer training has also been given to 300 teachers working in the city to increase the capacity of teachers.

The city has also been signing performance agreements between the headmaster and the head of the education department. Mayor Rai himself has been conducting math and science learning campaigns at the school. Including these, the municipality has introduced different programmes in order to improve quality of education.

In the current fiscal year, Rs. 260,500,000 has been allocated for the education sector in Suryodaya Municipality from federal government, Rs. 1,800,000 from Province 1 and Rs. 45,081,000 from the municipality.
Mayor Rai said that education should be improved for the development of the city.