Namrata Sharma

Education of a human being starts from the day one is born till the day one dies. Starting with life, new born babies start learning life skills of existence like suckling their mothers’ milk for survival, then slowly learning to perceiving and moving on with life. Just before one dies people probably learn to accept that they are about to depart and may never return! In between, there are various stages in life where learning and teaching happens both consciously and unconsciously throughout one’s life.

“Formal education system takes at least 14 years to pass out from high school and most children are 18 by the time they complete this education, however many children need to earn to survive by this age. We need to have an education system that teaches children to develop skills to earn while they learn,” said Professor Suresh Raj Sharma, founder of Kathmandu University, the first private-sector university in Nepal, while addressing the Kantipur Education Summit organised by Kantipur Media house in Kathmandu on March 21. Dr Sharma who did his education till PhD in Nepal stressed on the fact that the knowledge and information that is required to improve the public education system in Nepal is within us but proper search for that knowledge has not happened.

Sharma has contributed significantly to reforming the education system in Nepal and says that from his experience he feels that a system that equips the youth of Nepal to be able to earn and take care of their basic needs by the time they leave grade 12 needs to be established. During the same event, Narayan Sigdel, headmaster of Jana Jyoti Higher secondary school of Surkhet gave a series of examples on how he was encouraging his students to learn by experimenting in their farms and wherever possible and earn while they learn. While the labour law of many countries have declared child labour is illegal, governments have not been able to prevent dropouts of children from schools.

Dropout problem
Most dropouts are because they need to help their parents or caretakers in economic activities for their basic survival. During a significant period of my professional life, I have been involved in girls and women education and have travelled to various rural parts of Nepal. Jana Jyoti school of Surkhet is one of the schools which I have visited during monitoring of the girls education programme that I was involved with for more than a decade.

During one of my visits to Surkhet and an interaction with the parents and girl students of a Madrasa – a school run for Muslim children, parents shared that their daughters who had never been to schools before were now getting educated which stopped the early marriage in the Muslim communities. Many after education were hoping to get work in the schools as teachers. The parents with whom I was interacting there and elsewhere, informed me that although significant improvement of enrolling children in schools had happened, they still had to take out their sons out of school and send them to earn to repay the family loan. Boys being taken out of schools to earn for the family and girls taken out to take care of domestic work so the parents could go and earn is a sad reality in different parts of Nepal even now.

Several researches are now showing that the impact of the pandemic is such that the progress of educating children in low income families has been set back by decades. A data from Room to Read shows that more than 50 per cent girls from low income families will be out of school by the end of the pandemic. It can be speculated that probably a significant per cent of boys from such families are pulled out of school to earn for their families.

Another reality when one travels all around Nepal is the mushrooming of private sector education institutions. In urban towns like Kathmandu, Lalitpur, Bhaktapur, Biratnagar, Nepalgunj, almost every corner has a private school or college. However, according to Kantipur Education Summit data, although Nepal’s school education is 168 years old, two-thirds of the population — or around 10 million people still cannot read and write. Despite the constitution guaranteeing education as the fundamental right, education is still not accessible and affordable. It seems like expensive education has become merely a process to obtain certificates rather than a medium to ensure knowledge, skill and employment.

Around one million students are going abroad in search of quality education, and in the process, Nepal is not only losing the money but talent as well. It is now time for a public-private partnership (PPP) which focuses on building community approach education system that will equip the Nepali youths to learn skills and knowledge to fill their stomach and their pockets. To do this both girls and boys, by the time they leave grade 12 should learn domestic skills, and the ability to interact in their communities to move towards acquiring skills to earn and suffice their financial needs.

Public education
Rather than a battle of existence between the private sector education system and the government policies, a joint work is now required to strengthen the public education system in the country where PPP should be promoted in a healthy manner for them to sustain both operationally and financially and to also enable Nepali youth to learn skills and gain financial independence. So far, although policies have been formulated for educational reforms in Nepal, and the private sector has put in efforts to strengthen the education, a divide has been created among the haves and have-nots, which is not healthy for the nation.

Educationist professor Bidhya Nath Koirala said that to divide the society based on economic inequalities is a crime, therefore an education system suitable for all Nepalis on equal footing needs to be established. A good PPP could be the answer to this.

(Namrata Sharma is a journalist and women rights advocate. namrata1964@yahoo.com Twitter handle: @NamrataSharmaP )