A two-day national conference on strengthening public education in Nepal kicked off in Kathmandu today.

Speaking at the inauguration programme today, experts said public education was in a very bad state due to various factors and it needed to be strengthened for the overall development of students and society. They expressed concern about degrading quality of public education, expressing fear that it would disappear from our society.

Mahashram Sharma, joint-secretary and spokesperson, Ministry of Education, said those parents whose children were studying in public schools were not doing enough from their side to help their children with their studies, therefore students in public schools fared poorly as compared to children in private schools.

He said, “Lack of support from the guardians is the major problem in public schools as the guardians think it is only teachers’ responsibility to teach their kids after school enrolment.”

“The dropout rate has also decreased and the students’ promotion rate has increased which is a positive sign of improvement in public schools,” he said, adding, “Currently, some parents have also started taking interest in their children’s studies in public schools as well, thus the scenario is changing day by day.”He said they needed to apply public-private partnership model in education sector for its development.

Kedar Bhakta Mathema, an educationist who is also former vice chancellor of Tribhuvan University and former ambassador to Japan, said the quality of education in public schools was poor because of teachers’ lack of interest and effort.

He said, “More than 90 per cent teachers are trained in public schools but they are not delivering it.” He further said teachers’ management, strong leadership and physical infrastructure was a must to strengthen public education. “There is no regular class, no regular homework, no remedial support, no regular assessment of students in public schools while such things are regular and managed properly in private schools,” he added.

Sapana Malla Pradhan, former member of Constituent Assembly, said education should be made needs-based. “Education is needed to make students capable of leading an independent and dignified life,” she said.

Babu Kaji Shrestha, chairperson of National Campaign for Education in Nepal, said education was linked to daily activities, living standard, therefore, conventional ‘Chalk and Talk’ method is not in tune with today’s fast-paced world.

He stressed on the need to define education in a new way. Prof Bidhya Nath Koirala, Rose Nath Pande, Tirtha Parajuli and others presented papers on public education and nation building, state’s role in quality and comprehensive school education, curriculum, textbook and language.

source: the himalayan times,30 may 2013