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| Kathmandu, Wednesday February 12, 2003 Magh 29, 2059. |
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Govt to hand over
schools to communities
World Bank ready to provide financial,
technical support
By Nitya Nanda Timsina
KATHMANDU, Feb 11:With an aim to overhaul the
public schools, the government is planning to transfer the management of the 26,000-plus
government-aided schools to the local communities within next few years.
"If everything goes well, the government
will complete the management hand over of about 26,000 public schools to the local
communities by 2007," said Laba Prasad Tripathi, Spokesperson at the Ministry of
Education and Sports.
The strategy is to gradually devolve
financial and academic autonomy to the local communities, said Tripathi.
Once the School Management Committee, a body
of parents and teachers, will have taken charge of the schools fully, it will have the
authority, among others, to recruit teachers.
After the hand over, said Tripathi, the role
of the ministry and its agencies will be limited to curriculum planning, teacher’s
training, and monitoring and supervision.
In the first phase, the government is
planning to hand over 1000 public schools to the community by the end of this fiscal year.
This will be followed by hand-over of 2,000 primary, 200 lower secondary and 100 secondary
schools to the local communities by the end of the next fiscal year.
The government so far had absolute control
over the management of public schools, which resulted into a continued deterioration in
the quality of their education.
A high-level task force formed in 2001 to
explore ways to improve the quality of the public schools had recommended the management
hand over of the schools to the local communities.
Similarly, Nepal’s development partners
have also been pushing for the decentralisation of education, especially primary education
in Nepal to improve the performance of the public schools. The World Bank has already
assured ‘financial’ and ‘technical’ support for the management hand
over.
Dr Rajendra Dhoj Joshi, chief of the
education section at the World Bank, told The Kathmandu Post, "We are very much
willing to support the management hand over of the public schools."
Rajeev Upadhyaya, spokesperson at the World
Bank, hinted that the Bank would, in the initial phase, provide an ‘incentive
package’ to the SMC through the government.
Education experts say the government’s
move will go a long way towards the decentralisation of the education system and will have
"far-reaching" impacts on the quality of public education.
Dr. Mana Prasad Wagle, professor at the
Tribhuvan University, termed the decision as "far-reaching"; however, he called
for a strong supervision on academic and financial aspects of the schools.
Dr Roshan Chitrakar, project director of a
DFID-funded Community Literacy Project (CLP), said the management hand over would foster
transparency and stop the leakage that plagues the public schools.
"Our experience tells", said
Chitrakar, "wherever community is empowered to manage the schools, including the
construction of school building, results are better."
However, some experts expressed doubts over
the speedy hand over of the management since the government is yet to assess
community’s capability to run the schools.
Many schools are yet to form School
Management Committee, which is a must for the management hand over.
"The delay in forming SMC may create
problem," said a teacher of a government run school, requesting anonymity.
"Our school has not yet formed the SMC,
" said Karna Prasad Chaulagain, former chairman of the government-formed management
committee of Sarbha Secondary School in Charikot, Dolakha.
"When the process of forming SMC is
going at snails’ pace, how could the government expect transfer of so many schools in
such a short span of time?" he asked.
The government has, however, claimed to have
formed SMCs in more than 70 percent of the public schools.
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