The District Education Office (DEO), Bhaktapur, has shut 36 unregistered private schools in the last four months.

The DEO on Wednesday officially shut nine unregistered private schools. Twenty-nine such schools had been shut in October last year, said District Education Officer Rama Kanta Sharma.

“Most of the schools have not responded to our letters,” said Sharma. The office has given a deadline of 15 days for schools to clarify if they are operating without the knowledge of DEO.

Puja Vidya Sagar School, Gatthaghar, Shankhadar Memorial School, Madhyapur, Sindhu Academy, Madhyapur and Stanford International School have been shut. Likewise, Jyotigyan Academy, Brightland English School, Grace Land School, Friendship Academy and Ambition English School have also been shut officially.

Similarly, three private secondary schools have been shut for nil result in SLC exams held last year. Bihani Secondary School, Barahisthan, Sikshya Niketan, Yalachhe and Pragati Secondary School could not produce even a single SLC graduate last year.

Of the 29 schools shut last year, only 18 had mentioned their addresses in the municipality area whereas the remaining 11 had chosen VDCs as their fictitious addresses.

Sharma mentioned that all the paper schools had their fictitious addresses. Nine of the schools had their fictitious addresses in Bhaktapur municipality.

“We suspect that there are many more schools that have been renewing their licenses just to sell them off,” Sharma claimed.

In the last few years, the government has shut down dozens of community schools that exist only on paper. The eight DEOs in central Tarai are still under the scanner of the Commission for Investigation of Abuse of Authority (CIAA) for their failure to identify fake schools.

source:republica,12 feb 2015