Preparations in full swing!

Not long to go now before our next visit to Nepal at the end of March. This promises to our biggest and most influential yet as we prepare to run several teacher training programmes.

The first of these will be a Teaching Skills course over two days focusing on child centred techniques and this will run twice. The second is a two day management course and this is for Head teachers.

Each course will be attended by not only teachers from our own schools but also from the Ministry of Education who we are trying to influence to upgrade teacher training in Nepal.

Preparation is underway to create the courses and to find some corporate sponsorship in Kathmandu. If you can help we'd be delighted to hear from you.

Teaching days increased

Nepal's Ministry of Education has recently announced that the minimum number of days mandatory classes is to be set at 220. This is against a background level of between 100-150 which is so low mostly due to a range of political activities including teacher strikes and national political strikes. It is the national strikes, or bandhas, as they are known in Nepal which cause the most chaos. On such days enforcement is usually comprehensive and violent.

Overall this is a good national decision and it now gives us "licence" to state a specific contractual requirement of our sponsored teachers. In fact this was on the cards anyway after we discovered one teacher taking time out of his teaching duties to spend a few days helping with the "harvest"!