Officials at the Department of Education today said quality of education is not improving in community schools due to the lack of sufficient government investment in the sector.

Speaking at an interaction meeting that Education Journalists’ Network had organised, Tek Narayan Panday, director at the department, noted that as developed countries are spending a huge sum in the education sector, it is possible for them to provide quality education for free. In Nepal, he said, more than 60 per cent of the total budget allocated to the education sector is spent on teachers’ salary, whereas the rest of the sum goes to construction work and infrastructure development.

“Those countries, which boast of quality education, spend $8,000 per student in a year, while we hardly spend Rs 8,000 per student during the same period,” he said.

He also claimed that the government is solely responsible for the record low pass percentage of students in School Leaving Certificate (SLC) exams-2069. Only 27.97 per cent SLC examinees from community schools passed the exams, whereas 86.89 per cent examinees from institutional schools made it through.

There are around 31,000 community schools and 10,000 institutional schools in the country.

Educationist and former vice-chancellor of the Tribhuvan University, Kedar Bhakta Mathema, said the education sector is in a sorry state because the government lacks the will to find out the problems plaguing it and come up with solutions.

He also claimed that the government is solely to blame for poor SLC results. “Either teachers of community schools are not capable of teaching various subjects or they are not regular in class,” he said.

Suprabhat Bhandari, president of the Guardians’ Association Nepal, said the government needs to change its education policy for better results.

source: the himalayan times,3 June 2013