Five years after the launch of the much-vaunted campaign, the MoE has handed over the management of hardly 20 per cent of public schools to the community.[break] According to the MoE, a total of 31,889 public schools, which consist of 27,159 basic and 4,730 secondary level institutes, are now running across the country.
According to Shankar Thapa, chief of the Education Management Information System (EMIS) of the Department of Education (DoE), of the total 51,889 units of public schools, which comprise of 32,684 primary, 11,939 lower-secondary and 7,266 secondary levels, only 10,200 units have been handed over to the community.
Of the total school units managed by all-powerful committees formed by local communities, 6,880 are primary levels, followed by 2,239 lower secondary and 1,081 secondary levels. In spite of the enthusiasm demonstrated by local communities, the school handover program has hit a snag because of teachers´ protests.
“Teachers had some misgivings about this program right from the beginning,” Dr Lekh Nath Poudel, Assistant Spokesperson for the MoE, said. “We failed to dispel their misgivings, which ultimately hindered the program. Of course, the number of public schools handed over to community is not as high as we expected.”
Misgivings continue
Although the MoE says the motives behind the school handover program are genuinely noble, teachers are still suspicious. They doubt that the government might have launched the program with the motive of discontinuing support to public schools.
Teachers are particularly suspicious of some clauses in the education regulation, which have bestowed the rights of hiring, firing and promoting teachers on the management committees formed by local communities. “These clauses have even emboldened local communities to fix our salaries on the basis of performances,” said Baburam Thapa, General Secretary of the Nepal National Teachers Association (NNTA). “We are against these clauses.”
Thapa said that these clauses have undermined the roles of teachers. “Most of us have spent years in the teaching profession. Would it not be an injustice to us if some school management committee constituted by a local committee fired us?” Thapa questioned, adding. “We will support this program only if the MoE scrapped these clauses. Otherwise, our resistance will continue.”
The MoE says the government is ready to hold dialogues with teachers´ associations to make sure that this program will not risk their jobs in any way. But, no solid step has been taken in this direction. “The single motive of this program is devolution of power in a true sense,” said Narayan Krishna Shrestha, undersecretary at the MoE, adding, “We cannot run schools in Jumla from Kathmandu. However, teachers have not realized this.”
No assessment
Although the school handover program has been facing a lot of criticism from teachers themselves, the MoE has not done any researches so far to assess the performances of community-managed schools in comparison with their past performance, especially before being handed over to community. Hence, the MoE has failed to silence the dissenting voices of teachers.
On October 28, 2009, the MoE had signed a 14-point pact with teachers´ associations, agreeing to assess the impacts of the public school handover program by forming a taskforce. However, no taskforce has been formed so far. And, the MoE still is not in a position to say whether the program has really had positive impact on the students.
“We would have accepted the program had a free and fair study by the government shown its positive impacts,” said Thapa. “Our assessment is not very enthusiastic. As we analyzed the reports submitted by our district committees, we found that community-managed schools have not done well in terms of exam results.”
Unmindful of the impacts of the program, the MoE has set a goal to hand over 4,000 units of public schools across the country this year. However, this goal target is less likely to be achieved, given the past records. “The MoE has been setting goals every year,” said Maheshwor Sharma, under secretary at the District Education Office of Lalitpur. “However, we have never achieved such goals.”
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