The draft of the 13th interim three-year plan (2070-2073 BS) prepared by National Planning Commission (NPC) had targeted to make education up to secondary level free and compulsory, but the government has expressed helplessness to achieve the target citing insufficient budget.

Speaking at an interaction that Education Journalists Group had organised, Rose Nath Pande, deputy spokesman for the Ministry of Education (MoE), said education does not feature in the government’s priority list. Therefore, the budget would be insufficient to meet the target.

According to School Sector Reform Plan, Grade I to VIII is considered as basic education and Grade IX to XII is considered as secondary education. He said, “The government ceiling for the education sector is Rs 76 billion whereas we had demanded Rs 82 billion for free and compulsory education up to the secondary level.”

Pandey said due to the lack of sufficient budget, the ministry would not be able to provide free and compulsory education up to the secondary level. Therefore, we would be focusing to provide free and compulsory education only to secondary-level students, he said. “We will select five districts with high enrolment rate and five with low enrolment rate, in each development regions and would focus on free and compulsory education up to Grade X this year.”

A satisfactory Gender Parity Index, high enrolment rate (95.3 per cent) in Grade I and expansion of Early Childhood Development Centres were the achievements of the last three-year plan, he said. Pandey added that the government would be focusing on quality education this year. Dhruba Ghimire, NPC officer, said accessibility, quality enhancement, equity and governance were the top focus in education sector this time.

source: the himalayan times,26 June 2013