An "open letter" to the Director General of DoE, Nepal

Something seems to be stirring in the Department of Education at last as measures are announced to enact a performance management system to combat the poor quality of education delivered in community schools.

The DoE Director General (DG) Lava Dev Awasthi has announced that the government is planning to make teachers more accountable in community schools by implementing a "Grade Teaching System. For each of grades 1,2,3 there will now be one teacher who would teach all subjects.The DoE said that a circular has been sent to all schools across the country to arrange grade teachers for students of grades 1, 2 and 3.

The DoE Director Tek Narayan Pandey further stated that from now onwards the government school teachers would be tightly monitored and evaluated based on the achievements of their students. Previously the government had not tried to hold teachers accountable nor have the teachers attempted to apply new teaching techniques, which are the major causes behind the decreasing charm of public schools, added Pandey. 

“In future, the district education offices will have to prepare progress reports of both students and teachers from each school and submit to the Department of Education. If students score poor marks in a particular subject, the teacher in question would be given warnings to improve their teaching techniques. We will provide them with training if they need it,” Pandey claimed. 

The government can cut grants to schools that fail to show improvements over time. 

And so, although I have known Dr Awasthi since early 2010 and probably been a thorn in his side ever since, I must give credit where it is due. Here is my "open letter" to him sent today:

"Dear Lava

I have just been reading about your implementation of a Grade system for grades 1,2,3 in community schools and a clear performance management system with teachers being monitored by DEOs and held accountable for meeting standards. This is a very big step forward and one that I agree with totally. I congratulate you on taking this action which if professionally implemented will have a massive effect on uplifting quality in your schools.

When we first met in 2010 and created our first MoU, the SSRP had just been published. It is full of teacher/principal development issues and the Annex contains a set of Teacher Standards with section 2.c stating that "Quality of teachers is ensured by assessing their performance and providing them opportunity for professional development". It is encouraging to at last see positive steps being taken to implement something so important to your overall strategy.

If you recall it was on the basis of the SSRP that we at Nepal Schools Aid expanded our programmes of teacher training across the Valley. We created a wide range of modern teacher development programmes which we delivered to 400 teachers in 2012. We worked with 86 schools and tried to engage outwards into Terai, Jhapa, Nuwakot and other areas. We have shown our programmes to NCED and offered to hand over all of our specialised materials once 5 of their master trainers receive input from us, but we have not received any firm decision from them. In fact we set up the new NSA to assist in the delivery of the SSRP and I want to reaffirm our commitment to you and to that task with my staff in Kathmandu available to help in any way they can. 

We look forward to continuing our work in Nepal and trust that your implementation of teacher performance management and NSA's continued teacher development work will bring to fruition everything that is desired in the reform of your education system.

Best regards

Brian"

Making Nepalese classrooms more interesting?

According to a 2012 flash report of the Department of Education (DoE), 82 percent of children enrolled in Grade 1 reach Grade 5 while 32.5 percent of students quit school by the time they reach grade 8. The situation is worse at the secondary level. Over 55 percent of students are out of the school system by the time they reach grade 10. The highest dropout rates are in grade one (7.9 percent), grade eight (7.1 percent) and grade six (6.3 percent) for grades one to eight, according to the report. Aiming to control the high dropout rate and bring out-of-school children (OSC) back into the school system, the government has decided to launch special enrolment and retention programmes in 27 districts with special focus on eight Tarai districts with the highest number of OSCs. 

“Along with new enrolments, a special campaign aimed at minimising the high dropout rate by creating an environment for the students to continue their education will be conducted,” said Lava Deo Awasthi, DoE director general. The month-long campaign, scheduled to begin on April 15, aims to mobilise teachers’ unions, mother groups, children’s clubs and forest consumer groups. The campaign will be held in two phases and will welcome students with garlands for the first 15 days, followed by a door-to-door programme in the second half starting from May 1. Awasthi said NGOs and INGOs working in the education field will also be mobilised in the campaign with each of these organisations given a certain area and target.

The DoE is planning to increase the enrolment rate at the primary level to 90 percent through the new drive in the eight Tarai districts, said Awasthi. The programme will target bringing 66,526 students into the school system and controlling their dropout rate. The department has directed all District Education Offices to ensure that no student is out of the school system. In order to boost the ER, the government has also announced cash incentives. Students from Dalits and marginalised communities as well as poor families will be provided with special scholarships. The DoE pointed out that various factors including poverty, long distances to school, disability, illness, language barriers, politicisation, migration and children’s dislike for school are the main reasons for dropouts. 

“Our assessment shows that we can retain students to a large extent by improving the academic environment in schools,” Awasthi said. “From this academic session, the DoE will focus in making classrooms more interesting.” 

Now, I have known Dr Awasthi since 2009 when the SSRP was first launched and intend to ask him to ensure that we at NSA are involved in this "programme" too. So I encourage everyone to write to him too, especially with some views on how he can "make classrooms more interesting", because giving garlands and paying children to enrol in schools has NOT worked for the last 3 years. Adopting a "bums on seats" approach does NOTHING to improve retention. It's the TEACHERS who need to be more interesting, so DO please write to him via the Department of Education which shows his email address as lava.awasthi@gmail.com