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Kathmandu Friday January 05, 2001 Paush 21, 2057.
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Introduce effective
policies
It is unfortunate that education policies and
programmes of the Ministry of Education and Sports are donor-driven. If the government had
introduced measures with an aim to improving the standard, and implemented its policies
and programmes effectively, things would not have been in such a sorry state. Neither
would the government-run educational institutions have turned from bad to worse. Even now,
half of the children in the country drop out of primary education. Unqualified teachers
and inadequate teaching equipment are other reasons that have hit the education system
hard, especially the government-run schools. For this the government policies and
programmes, rather than the education system, are to be blamed.
The Institutional Linkage Programme (ILP)
prepared a preliminary draft report on institutional structure for educational
development. This clearly underlines that the government is confined to only
administrative functions of education. This also indicates that the government has
introduced the policies and programmes suggested by the donor-countries to improve the
education standard. Had it not done so, the technical and institutional aspects of the
country’s educational system would have improved a lot. Unfortunately, this did not
happen. What has happened is that the government has failed to mobilize resources, develop
criteria for affiliation and update curriculum in time. As a result, students continue to
suffer. This has certainly raised doubts whether the government can ever improve the much
-needed education system of the country.
It is sad but true that the government has
done nothing to improve the education system during the last decade. The reasons for this
deplorable state of affairs are rampant corruption, nepotism and misguided policies.
Ironically, over fifty percent of the staff at the Ministry of Education and Sports can
hardly make out the responsibility of their jobs. More than 61 percent employees at the
Ministry have not been promoted even after 14 years of their relentless service.
The government must realize that the
deteriorating education system of the country has become a matter of grave concern,
especially due to ineffective policies. There are thousands of children who cannot
complete primary education and hundreds of schools lack proper infrastructure. It should
be noted that the need of the hour is to reform the education system. The earlier it
happens, the better it is. But in order to realize the goal of reforming the system, it
has to formulate comprehensive policies and programmes and implement them effectively.
Unless the government introduces better education system, the country will never achieve
economic development.
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