Don't mess up education

Thousands of students attending public and private educational institutes reached their schools Monday morning only to turn back a few minutes later as the schools remained closed due to a strike call made by the Maoist-affiliated Nepal Educational Republican Forum (NERF) without prior notice. Students, parents and school managements were caught off guard as NERF called up the schools Monday morning and warned them to stay shut. All this happened less than three weeks after the government declared schools a “peace zone”. In calling repeated strikes at schools NERF has displayed an utter lack of sensitivity, and is playing with the future of children. But the government, which has failed to ensure that schools remain open and free from the influence of political parties and their sister wings, is no less a culprit here.



The pattern of the government’s response to reoccurring strikes in the education sector has become increasingly pathetic. It waits till the last minute by which time the problem grows into a full blown crisis such as complete paralysis of the schools due to protracted strikes, and then under tremendous pressure reaches a deal with the protestors and accedes to any demand, however irrational. The result: It fails to implement the deals, thus giving the protesters an excuse to launch yet another round of strikes, with additional demands.



That is exactly what happened this time also. NERF is right to say that it is just asking the government to implement past agreements but it is wrong to force the government to sign a deal that it could never implement. So an inept government and an irresponsible NERF were only fooling each other, and students and parents have been made to bear the brunt of their callousness and folly.



The three demands that NERF tried to push this time are unjustified to say the least. It demanded that all temporary teachers be made permanent through internal competition and begin a process to give permanent appointment to ‘relief-quota’ teachers. It also wanted to scrap the Company Act in the education sector. Temporary teachers, including those under the relief quota, are appointed mostly through political connections, with complete disregard for professional competence. Therefore, making them permanent simply means institutionalizing incompetence and political allegiance in education. Agreed that temporary teachers who have worked for years have acquired invaluable experience that gives them an advantage in their calling.



The government can and should take into account this experience factor and allocate some extra points to temporary teachers in the selection process. But to demand permanent positions for them on an automatic basis, shutting the door to free competition for fresh graduates, is unfair as well as unconstitutional. We also don’t understand why NERF wants to abolish the Company Act as it applies to the education sector. The Act requires profit making private schools to pay tax. A rational demand would be for strict tax enforcement on profit making schools, stringent regulation of their tax compliance and mobilization of that revenue to improve resource-strapped public sector education. What’s wrong with this idea? Finally, we encourage both the government and NERF to begin fresh negotiations with an open mind, throwing out the window all that has been agreed in the past, and strike a deal that is realistic and implementable.

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