Raising Education Quality

PRIME Minister Lokendra Bahadur Chand very appropriately underlined the need for providing access to education to everyone in order to achieve sustainable social and economic development of the country. Addressing the seventh national convention of the Private and Boarding School Organisations of Nepal (PABSON), in Kathmandu the other day, Prime Minister Chand said that the dream of nation building cannot be realized without appropriate and adequate development of practical and quality education in the country. It is beyond any shade of doubt that education is the foundation of development of the society and the country. Education creates informed and skilled human resource, which is the very basis of development as well as mobilises the society towards progress. As said by Prime Minister Chand, development of education is a must to achieve all-round and sustainable development. Realising this fact, the government has taken a number of measures in terms of policy and programmes to improve the quality of education and provide access to education to all in the country. It has accorded high priority to the development of education and set aside a substantial part of the national budget for the same in order to ensure education for all within a period of a few years and raise the quality of education. Different donor countries and agencies have also been cooperating and collaborating in Nepal's efforts for educational development. Similarly, the private sector's participation in the country's education is very encouraging and commendable. The Tenth Plan has also adopted the policy of launching literacy and income generating schemes as well as non-formal education, which can be of practical use in life. As a result, there have been positive and significant developments in the education sector. Because of these initiatives, the literacy rate of the country is now over 50 per cent. The number of schools, students and educated population has also significantly increased over the last few years. However, the development is more focused on quantity rather than quality. At the same time, academicians and experts have complained about the quality of education in Nepal. It is true that quality of Nepal's educational sector is yet to be developed at par with the international standard. Efforts, thus, need to be made to raise the quality of education. Similarly, the need of the hour is also to impart technical and practical education so that students may immediately apply the knowledge learnt in the classrooms to improve their life.

Food-deficit Districts

AGAINST the total foodgrain quota of 6.600 quintals for the Humla district foodgrain depot and district headquarters, the Nepal Food Corporation, as per a news item carried by this daily the other day, altogether 4,629 quintals have been made available to the district, including 2,674 quintals carried over from last year and 1,944 quintals transported within the last six months of this year. Similarly, 202 quintals of foodgrain had been forwarded to Bajura district via surface transport in coordination with security forces there. Humla and Bajura districts are not only food deficit areas but also located in the hilly and mountainous regions of the country. It could be for this reason that the concerned authorities are not only having to meet the shortfalls in foodgrains in the two districts through quotas from the Nepal Food Corporation (NFC) but also to transport the allocated foodgrains through difficult terrain to the godowns in those districts so that the people there would not feel the pangs of hunger. More worrying to note is that the districts surrounding these two food-deficit districts of Humla and Bajura are also food-deficit areas which are singularly characterised by the lack of reliable transport facilities and networks, thereby forcing the concerned authorities, particularly the NFC, to heavily rely on porters to carry the foodgrains to the food deficit districts' godowns. This mode of transporting foodgrains, needless to point out, is not only forcing the NFC to bear additional costs but also causing damage to the very foodgrains on which the local people there are inordinately dependent on for their survival. As if all this were not enough, due to the torrential rains during the yearly monsoon season coupled with snowfalls in some districts during winter time, the NFC has only limited time to transport the foodgrains.

But then, notwithstanding the cost entailed or the problems being faced in transporting the foodgrains to foodgrain deficit districts, the concerned authorities and the NFC are duty bound to ensure that the local people of the foodgrain deficit districts like Humla and Bajura continue to receive additional supplies of foodgrains. For, any shortcomings on their part could not only aggravate the foodgrain supply problems there but, worse still, also give rise to other problems. As such, it would be in the fitness of things for the concerned authorities and the NFC to speedily chart out immediate and long-term foodgrain supply schemes for all foodgrain deficit districts.