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Educational Opportunity in Nepal: Problems, Challenges, and Solution

- Bishnu Prasad MISHRA

Non-formal Education Center, Sanothimi

Executive Summary

Education has the power to transform lives. It broadens people's freedom of choice and action,
empowering them to participate in the social and political lives of their societies and equipping them with
the skills they need to develop their livelihoods (UNESCO, 2010). Therefore, having the opportunity for a
meaningful education is one of the basic human rights. It is a condition for advancing social justice.
People who are left behind in education face the prospect of diminished life chances in many other areas
including employment, health and participation in the political processes that affect their lives. Therefore,
everyone should have the opportunity to have meaningful education. In line to this argument this paper
deals mainly with the educational opportunities in Nepalese context, and measures for providing
educational opportunities.

In this paper, first I have presented the evolution of educational opportunity, secondly I have described
the vision of educational opportunity of Nepal, thirdly and finally, I presented some measures for
providing educational opportunity, with special reference to Nepal.

What Educational Opportunity is for Nepalese context?

It would not be exaggeration to mention some international convention about providing educational
opportunity for the children. One of them was the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UNDHR) in
1948. The 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights and subsequent treaties establish the right to
education, and have the force of law for governments that ratify them. The Convention on the Rights of
the Child, the most widely ratified human Rights treaty, reaffirms the right to free and compulsory
primary schooling and emphasizes child well-being and development. As education is incorporated in
Human and Child Rights, it became the responsibility of nation to educate all the children without
distinction of any kind. Everyone has right to education. Similarly, half a century ago, governments
around the world made a clear statement of intent on education convention Against Discrimination in
Education (1960) imposed what amounts to a comprehensive ban not just on discrimination by legal
intent, but on the processes that have the effect of causing discrimination (UNESCO, 1960, Article 1,
Para 1).

Going forward, in 1990, from around the world including Nepal, 164 governments, together with partner
organizations made a collective commitment to dramatically expand educational opportunities for
children, youth and adults by 2015 for providing basic education to all the children without distinction of
any kind, such as race, color, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin,
property, birth or other status, is the education opportunity to education. Nepal also made commitment to
EFA and prepared a National Plan of Action for EFA. Thus, to educate all the children is the obligation of
nation.
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Accordingly the EFA vision of Nepal to ensure that all children in Nepal have quality basic and primary
education, in caring and joyful environment. That all children have experience of caring and joyful
childhood development, primary education in their mother tongue without having to feel prejudices of
cultural, ethnic or cast discrimination. That almost all adults are literate and are engaged in continuous
learning through Community Learning Centres (CLCs). Provisions of varities of appropriate learning and
life skill education that are contextual and directly beneficial for youths and adults are available through
different modes including CLCs (MoES, 2003). This is the educational opportunity defined by EFA core
document prepared by Nepal.

Global NER is 87% where as Nepal has 93.7 percent. To put it another way, globally more than 13
percent children are out-of-schools where the number of Nepal is 6.3 percent (DoE, 2009, p. 5). But the
scenario of internal efficiency is painful where 63.5 percent of the total students enrolled in grade one
promotes in grade two and the share of repeaters of the same grade in current year is 9.9 percent. Such a
painful scenario not only limits in dropouts in grade 1-5 (70.8 %) but also in the internal efficient of
primary level which is 70 percent (ibid). The 2001 census shows that Nepal's literacy rate to be 57 percent
whereas it is estimated about 67 percent. These statistic shows that a large numbers of school aged
children are out of schools and they are the hard core group to be served by the Nation. Keeping this fact
in the centre, Nepal has identified girls/female, children with disabilities, Dalit children, Janajati, street
children, children in conflict, sexually abused children, poor children, children in prison, orphan, and
children victimized from HIV AIDs and language minorities as the disadvantaged from educational
facilities (MoES, 2003) which should be treated as hard core group for providing educational
opportunities in Nepal.

The facts mentioned above indicate that Nepal's school education system is facing two challenges: short
falls in access and in quality as other developing countries facing (UN Millennium Project, 2005). If so
Nepal has significantly accelerates the enrollment of children and improve their ability to keep children in
school. Increasing access and improving in quality are mutually reinforcing. If schools cannot offer a
good-quality education, parents are far likely to send their children to school (ibid).

What can be done for providing opportunity to education?

Three strategies can help get out-of-school children into school: crafting specific interventions to reach
out-of-school children, increasing educational opportunities (formal and non formal) for girls and women,
and increasing access to post-primary education (UN Millennium Project, 2005, p.5). The same report
states that all of these strategies take into account the powerful demand-side influences that affect the
propensity of parents to send their children to school.

The concept of out-of-school and disadvantages from school/educational facilities implies the solution for
providing opportunity to education (Woodward, 2000). There are globally accepted measures to serve the
disadvantaged peoples from the educational opportunities. According to Education for All, Global
Monitoring Report (GMR) (2008) suggests that expanding equitable access, improving learning, teaching
and learning and restoring education in difficult circumstances (UNESCO, 2008). Opportunity in
education associated various problems. Different factors affect the attainment of educational opportunity
in education. Here, some measures are listed as below:
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 Assure provision of early childhood care and education programmes with health, nutrition and
education components, especially for the most disadvantaged children because children having
experience of early childhood development classes can perform better as compared to the
children without experience of ECD. Therefore, Nepal have to concentrate its efforts for
establishing well equipped ECD classes with trained teachers so that well prepared new entrant
can be produced for grade one.

 Abolish school fees and provide enough places and teachers in school to cope with entrants
because socio-economic factor is responsible for barrier to schooling. Parents' income is directly
proportional to educational attainment. Poor children are less likely to attend school. Low levels
of enrollment and completion are concentrated not only in certain regions but also among certain
segments of the population. In every country completion rates and central Africa, the median
grade completed by the bottom 40 percent of the income distribution is zero, because less than
half of poor children complete over the first year of school (UN Millennium Project, 2005). Nepal
is not different from this scenario.

 Provide financial support such as scholarships, cash or in-kind transfers to children from poorer
households because economic is barriers to girls' schooling which is study highlighted by a recent
research study (as cited in Political Perspectives, 2008). A study highlighted that (Ridley, 2004)
Poor families who rely on children's labour and income will not be prepared to release their
children for schooling despite the provision of a cash incentive if the incentive is too small
(CERID, 1999). Students from low-income families are 2.4 times more likely to drop out of
school than are children from middle-income families, and 10.5 times likely than students from
high-income families. But there is no any research done in this type. Excessive domestic chores
are also identified as the barriers to children schooling. Opportunity costs related to the work girls
perform in the family are high because girls have a load of domestic and seasonal labour (World
Bank 2005). In other words, to girls' parents it may seem economically inefficient to send their
daughters to school when they have so much housework.

 Take measures to alleviate the need for child labour and allow for flexible schooling and non-
formal equivalency course for working children and youths. Community Learning Centre (CLC)
will be the best practices for the rural illiterate peoples because not only formal schooling but also
work experience contribute accumulating significant knowledge, skills, and attitudes values
(KSA), but as change accelerated, KSA gained in previous learning gradually became also largely
obsolete (Saxton, 2000).

 Promote inclusive policies that open schools to disabled children, indigenous children and those
from other disadvantaged groups. In this sense education becomes a public good and the society
benefits from increased education as well as the individual. In every country completion rates are
low for children from poor households. Moreover, the education income gap exacerbates gender
disparities. Girls from poor households register very low levels of completion in many countries
(Bruns, Mingat and Rakotomalala, 2003).

 Reports on girl trafficking estimates that 5,000 to 12,000 girls between the ages of 12-20 years
are trafficked from Nepal to other countries for prostitution (HimRights, 2003 cited in Tuladhar,
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2007). The Study found that majority of the trafficked girls parents (75%) are illiterate (IIDS,
2003, cited in ibid). Another study conducted with commercial sex workers found that more than
55% of the respondents were totally illiterate, only about 15% had primary schooling, and only
1% had completed the tenth grade and above (Tuladhar p. 97-109)1. Thus, trafficking, and
prostitution, is responsible barriers to education. Therefore, establishing media and publishing
policies that promote education. Provision of advocacy programs against the trafficking, sexual
abusing, discrimination etc are the measure for ensuring educational opportunities for affected
population.

 Create safe and healthy learning environment by recruiting teacher from ethnic, minorities and
schedule cast (Dalit) along with better teacher training. Use child-friendly teaching learning
environment in the classroom. This provision can be fulfill from the better teacher training
program because experience, training and education are the three main mechanisms for acquiring
human capital, with education being primary most individuals (Saxton, 2000). Recruiting teacher
from ethnic, minorities and Dalit is the main responsibilities of Ministry of Education and
producing better trained teacher is the responsibilities of National Centre for Educational
Development (NCED) and Faculty of Education (FoE). There NCED and FoE should reform
their teacher training curriculum for addressing learner-friendly teaching learning issues.

 Address gender disparities by increasing the numbers of female teachers and building schools
close to home and with proper sanitation. It is generally more cost-effective to locate schools in
relatively densely populated places, poorer families, which tend to be disproportionately located
in remote rural areas, may face substantially higher costs to send their female children to school
and, as a result, tend to acquire less education (Coady and Paker, 2002). In 2000, a UNICEF
(20001) study found that majority of young women do not attend school when they are
menstruating if there are no private latrine facilities to enable them to care for personal hygiene
(World Bank, 2005 cited in UN Millennium Project, 2005). The availability of schools and
latrines, and causes limited access to school and particularly affect girls, because they are more
vulnerable than boys to travel long distances or study in a school with no hygiene facilities. In the
case of Nepal, about 90% schools do not have separate toilets for girl (Bista, 2006). Thus this is a
genuine problem affecting girls attendance to school.

 Provision of Open and Distance mode of eduation: Formal education system, for various reasons,
is not being able to enroll all the school age children to school. The enrolled one not completing
their education cycle. Access in education was denied deu to various reasons. From these
scenarios, it can be argued that there are several challenges in our education system.

 Language barrier of schooling: Language and ethnicity are deeply intertwined. People who
cannot speak a country's dominant language may have less access to written and spoken sources,
restricting their opportunities for employment and social mobility (Smits and Gǘndǘz-Hosgȍr,
2003, smits et al., 2008 cited in UNESCO, 2010, p. 172). Parent who does not speak the official
language in which their children are being educated may have less opportunity to engage with
teacher, education authorizes and homework. And their children may not grasp what is being
taught if teacher do not speak their home language. This results inequalities in opportunities and
1
Further see: Society and Education 2007, page 79.
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become major factor in leaving behind from educational opportunities. In line to this argument
let's see some empirical examples. Ethno-Linguistic diversity creates series challenges in
Bangladesh, Ethiopia and Pakistan. In Balochistan province (Pakistan), for example, language
barriers have a significant impact or access to education, especially for girls in rural areas, where
local language is predominant. Since, Nepal is a multi- lingual country; people of Nepal speak
many languages. According to Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS) there are 100 caste/ethnic
groups and 92 different mother tongues existed in Nepal. Those children, whose mother language
is not Nepali, speak their language at home and they speak Nepali and English language in school
as a medium of learning. Language becomes the distracting factors for them, this cause drop out
from school. Elaborated code in class room and restricted code of language in the home is direct
related to the understanding level of the children. Because of these code children cannot
understand the classroom language used by their teachers (Aryal 2003). Therefore, it is suggested
to recruit teachers from ethnic minorities groups.

 Supply trained teacher and provide on the job training for those who are not well trained along
with providing opportunities for those who are under qualified as the benchmark qualification for
schooling system because education or training raise the productivity of teachers by imparting
useful knowledge and skills (Becker, 1964) and better-educated teachers can be trained for
specific jobs more quickly at a lower cost (Thurow, 1975). Appropriate academic qualification is
equally important for teachers because education enhances an individual's ability to successfully
deal with disequilibria in changing socio-economic conditions (Schultz, 1975) and education
which include training improve productivity (Levin and Kelley, 1994 cited in Saxton, 2000).

 School environment as barriers to girls schooling: The lack of female teachers has been identified
as one of the main causes of girls' low enrolment and attendance (FAO & UNESCO 2005; ILO
1998 cited in UN Millennium Project, 2005). According to EFA Global Monitoring Report sexual
violence, insecure school environment and inadequate sanitation disproportionately affect girls’
self-esteem, participation and retention (UNESCO, 2008). Textbooks, curricula and teacher
attitudes contribute continue to reinforce stereotypes on gender roles in society (ibid, P. 5). At
present, only few percent of primary school teachers (34.5%) are female, 4.2 percent are from
Dalit and 23.4 are from Janajati (DoE, 2009) in Nepal, particularly the case in rural areas.
Therefore, the numbers of female teachers from Dalit, Janajati, and ethnic minorities should be
recruited.

Concluding Remarks

Government of Nepal reaffirms its commitment to equal opportunity in education under international
human right conventions and obligated to act on that commitment and efforts are gearing toward its
destination but could not reach as per its intention. Marginalization is being matters at different levels.
Having the opportunity for meaningful education is a basic right of the children and a condition for
advancing social justice. Restricted opportunity in education is one of the most powerful mechanisms for
transmitting poverty across generation. Factors contributing to lack of educational opportunity are
poverty, gender, ethnicity, geographic location, disability, race and other factors. Identifying such factors
and concentrating efforts towards providing equal opportunities in education is great challenge for Nepal
and needed strong political willingness.
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