Skill-Oriented Education

MINISTER for Education Amod Prasad Upadhyaya said the other day that His Majesty’s Government has been making preparation for the introduction of vocational and skill-oriented education system in order to enhance the quality of education and produce more skilled and qualified human resource in the country. Addressing a function in Biratnagar, Minister Upadhyaya said that the government was thinking to hand over the responsibility of school management to the civil society in order to improve the school management system. Of late, there have been a lot of complaints that the management of the public schools is weak and not keeping with the changed global context. This, in turn, has resulted in the degradation in the quality of education imparted in public schools. It needs no reiteration that the government has been according high priority to education sector and has kept on allocating a large chunk of national budget for the improvement of education in the country. However, in terms of quality, our education system is far from satisfactory. Educationists had long been demanding reforms in our education system since it has failed to produce qualified and competent needed by the nation. For, global experiences have proved that unless and until skilled, qualified and competent human resource is produced, the country will not be able to keep ahead in terms of social and economic development. In other words, skilled and competent human resource is the major key to the nation’s prosperity. As far as the deterioration in the quality of education in Nepal is concerned, educationists have been attributing it mainly to the politicisation of education. And, to the political parties’ penchant for viewing schools and other educational institutes as the ready grooming grounds for their cadres. They further claimed that this is encouraging teachers, mostly in public schools and whose sole duty is to impart quality education to the pupils, to often run after political parties for their personal benefits rather than in improving their professional competence and efficiency. This is quite evident from the huge gap between public and private schools in terms of imparting quality education. Against this background, major reforms in the educational sector is urgently needed. In this regard, the civil society, as pointed out by Minister Upadhyaya, needs to be involved in managing schools since they are one of the major stake-holders as far as imparting quality education in public schools is concerned. It is to be hoped that with the involvement of civil society in the management of public schools, the existing situation in the education sector will improve for the better.

Rise Of ‘B’

THE average living standards in Nepal being what they are, Nepalese are vulnerable to a wide range of diseases, communicable and non-communicable. The fact that the per capita spending on health needs of an average Nepalese is one of the lowest in the world explains why the health situation is abysmal. The poorest of the poor are completely defenceless to a host of diseases. In a reflection of the appalling lack of basic health care, Nepal witnesses close to 30,000 children dying every year from the very preventable diarrhoea. One of the deadly afflictions that is affecting a larger number of Nepalese every year is Hepatitis B which causes liver cancer. Though the disease is no less deadly than AIDS, somehow it does not receive proportionate attention from the health officials. According to an estimate, some 200,000 Nepalese are currently suffering from Hepatitis B. Every year some 200 patients are added to this figure. Some 34 per cent of liver cancer in Nepal is caused by Hepatitis B. Findings of a study done by a health foundation point to an inexorable march of this disease. While only 10 per cent of the people suffering from acute jaundice caught this dreaded disease in the mid-eighties, the percentage has now jumped to 35 per cent. The spread of this disease is not hard to understand. The open border, women trafficking, use of intravenous drugs, migration and other factors all contribute to spreading the disease.

However, it is not as if this disease cannot be checked. Unlike AIDS, Hepatitis B is preventable through vaccinations. If babies are given shots against Hepatitis B within one year of their birth, they are safe from this disease which, if contracted, makes them vulnerable to liver cancer at the age of 20-25. Considering the gravity of this disease, shots as a preventive tool is the obvious option. But the big question here is the vaccination cost. While well-off families may be able to afford the price of shots for their children, the average Nepali household could find it just too expensive and thus may give it a miss. Hence, the government has to devise some means to offer Hepatitis B shots at a reasonable price. Health officials should consider offering such shots at government health service outlets in areas where the population is at a high risk of contracting this ever-growing disease.