New school education structure to be set up

The members of parliament are currently engaged in making amendment to the Education Act, 1971 (Eighth Amendment) Bill, paving way for the set up of the new education structure.At the same time, stakeholders have shown their deep concern over the new legal document of the education system of the country, while advocating for free and compulsory education to all up to higher school level as per the spirit of the new constitutions, saying that the bill has not clearly mentioned the matter.

According to the bill, the new school education structure mentions that there should be only two type of school level like basic (grade 1 to 8) and secondary (grade 9-10), but in contrary, as per present provision, grade 1-5 is primary level, grade 5-7 lower secondary, grade 9-10 secondary and grade 10-12 higher secondary level.

The proposed bill has provisioned that there will an integrated national examination board headed by an educationist or an expert and in the same way the present examinations board holding the school leaving certificate examinations will be automatically merged into the national examination board with the help of the present human resource of Higher Secondary Education Board (HSEB) in Bhaktapur.

However, HSEB office-bearers said that they would not accept the merger plan without ensuring their future jobs and responsibilities.

Earlier, the parliament failed to endorse the bill due to the failure of the stakeholders to hold discussions on the matter.

However, the donors have been urging the government to pass the bill soon as they said that they have invested in the School Sector Reform Plan since 2009 with about 20 percent of financial supports.

Spokesperson at Ministry of Education (MoE), Dr Hari Lamsal said that they were waiting for the bill to be approved by the parliament as they have incorporated all the necessary issues while making the draft.

The teacher community, a key stakeholder, demanded that priority should be given to non permanent teachers while announcing vacancies to the posts of teachers as per an agreement with the MoE about five years ago.

Keshav Niraula, Chairperson of Confederation of Nepalese Teachers, also demanded that some missing issues regarding rights of teachers should be incorporated and that the rights of trade unions should not be cut. RSS