Tutors rise to the challenge, will YOU?

The adventure begins for our three newly appointed Nepali Tutors, three young people with potential who deserve a chance to rise above the daily teaching of children in their respective schools. Babita (pictured) and Bashu are from Bal Bigyan school in Patan. Krishna is from Bal Kalyan school in Balaju. All are keen to learn, to improve, to develop what they do in the classroom.
Having received the full training from our UK teachers a couple of weeks ago they were issued with the challenge of repeating the workshop over a day from a dozen or so teachers from their respective schools who don't speak English. Saturday, they rose to that challenge and spent a day on child centred learning in a classroom at Bal Bigyan school. Their enthusiasm and courage in giving it a go were most humbling and if we could find another hundred or so like them we could transform teaching styles in the Kathmandu valley. Now there's a thought, anybody got the funding, because we CAN do it!!!!

Need a bit more humility ourselves

An article in this morning's Kathmandu Post has prompted a response from the NSA Chairman to remind the Nepal government that they should make no apology for asking aid agencies to seek guidance on delivering aid and not to work direct with local communities.We agree, and it supports and strengthens the way we have and will always work, despite the frustrations.

Dear Sir,
Your article outlining the government’s stance towards aid agencies and donors being requested to “respect the official channels” and to avoid working directly with local communities is a timely reminder at all levels that we must work together and in a coordinated way for maximum effect.

However we must seriously question why such a meeting was even necessary with the likes of DFID from my own country (UK) when we had always been led to believe that DFID’s business plan was developed in conjunction with Nepal’s government focusing on sector priorities! Surely the focus of such a meeting should have been on the proliferation of mid to small level agencies such as ourselves who can be uncontrolled and uncoordinated to an extent that inputs and achievements are diluted and unevaluated.

For three years we at Nepal Schools Aid have provided educational materials and teachers for 5 community schools in Kathmandu with probably no need for government guidance, but this year for the first time we were in a position to offer teacher training which DOES require sanction and immediately sought Education Ministry guidance and advice. We have found them to be reasonable people, helpful, and encouraging towards us. But why, oh why, does it all have to take so long to process needs, take decisions, create registrations and so on which can be a serious barrier to the enthusiasm of respectful volunteers.

Finally, in ALL cases whatever the donor/agency level Nepal’s government should not have to make “Humble suggestion: First deal with central government before reaching out to people”. We, the agencies, should have a bit more respect and common sense to be humble ourselves!

 

Yes Minister .... that will do nicely!

Who would have thought that when we began three years ago that today, Nepal's Ministry of Education would want to talk about a deal with us to be a special scheme for them in developing teaching skills. In fact the deal is wider than this in that they want to work with us on developing the "software aspects" of quality education in a number of schools which can be properly evaluated.
So, we drove up to this large white building which is the Ministry where we met with Dr Lava Deo Awasthi, Joint Secretary, Planning Division; Dr Lekha Nath Poudel, Under Secretary; Mukunda Mani Khanal, Section Head, Foreign Aid Division.   It's the closest we've ever felt to being in the presence of the British Raj!
The meeting began with the classic exchange of who does what in our respective organisations, the vision and strategy of NSA and specifically our capability programme. Without writing up the full minutes of the meeting the key points made by the Ministry were as follows:
1. "We want to find a mechanism to institutionalise your valued work, it's a treasure to us"
2. "We should work together on selecting schools to be in your programme so they can be the centre of our attention. We need a rationale which specifies which schools, where, why etc so we can make the case for your approach even stronger"
3. "You could help us to understand the greater needs if you are prepared to work outside the Kathmandu Valley in areas such as Humla, Karnali, Tarai so we include the extremely poor areas in the experiment"

The meeting concluded with four specific action points:
1. The Ministry will create a draft Memorandum of Understanding of how we will work together and in which areas.
2. The Ministry and ECCA will investigate any administrative hurdles we may have to negotiate especially registration with the Nepal Social Council.
3. The Ministry with ECCA input will specify needs for next year's training syllabus
4. The Ministry will investigate the teacher staffing needs of our current five schools to see if we can be relieved of funding extra teachers, thereby releasing funds for more effective use elsewhere.

Now, THIS is the type of post meeting action list I like, one where I have no actions personally!
Off to celebrate.

 

 

Feedback to the future

Friday afternoon saw teachers and Heads from our five schools meeting to discuss the recent training programmes and our plans for the coming year.
We had collated the feedback forms completed at the end of each course, all generally positive about content, relevance, delivery methods and pace. This helped us to focus a discussion on future programmes although we did have a feeling of " not knowing what they don't know about". However the main requests about future training were as follows:
Teacher training should keep it's focus on techniques but to also consider wrapping the techniques around the specific subjects of maths, science, literacy, life/social skills. Being helped with ideas about creating teaching materials would also be useful. Finally in a different area there were some requests for training at a secondary level since some of our schools are lower/secondary year 8/10.
The management training requests are more confused, partly because the Heads have also to give around 50% of their time to teaching as well as managing the school. Specifically they mentioned training in motivation, vision, leadership, developing younger teachers, managing older teachers (who have in many cases little or no interest in changing or learning and are in a union/government protected job).
This feedback is a reasonable start but the essential ingredient is the views or blessing of the Nepal Ministry of Education. We have a meeting with them today.

A "cunning plan" takes shape

For some time now we have begun to believe that part of our strategy involving the payment of teacher salaries is wrong. Certainly this helps a specific school, but only one. Pay the salaries of four teachers and that helps four schools.

But instead, imagine we pay the salaries of say, only two "tutors", skilled Nepali teachers who can absorb the training given by teachers from the UK and then repeat the training for more and more teachers in any number of schools.
Our immediate need then is to find a few young Nepali teachers who are keen to learn, flexible, will rise to the challenge and can speak reasonable English. So, initially we have selected Krishna from Bal Kalyan school and Bashu and Babita from Bal Bigyan school to take part in a small experiment. In this experiment we have asked them to prepare a ONE day workshop based on the recent two days training they have been given in Child Centred Techniques and to deliver it to 9 delegates on April 17th. We will observe, assess, then judge waht to do next.
All three have accepted the challenge!

Rotary Club success

Sunday morning we had an appointment with the Rajadhani Rotary Club in Kathmandu, at the Annapurna Hotel. Arranged by our good friend Ummed there are a number of members who know Champa from her past, but mostly they chose to stay away! Anyway the overall focus of our presentation to them was "The vision, values and governance of running a UK charity" as applied to Nepal Schools Aid with the obvious goal on our part to persuade them to support us, either in helping with the management of Kesh Chandra school or with making a regular contribution towards our material support to that school. Twenty minutes later they had offered to supply 2100 exercise books as a Rotary with several members agreeing to make donations.
Result!

First courses .......

 

First two courses now completed successfully, according to all the feedback we've received anyway. The real proof of the pudding though will be in the application of the management skills and the teaching skills. Another teaching skills course begins today for a different 16 delegates.
I think we have "suffered" on both courses as a result of the varied level of spoken English skill amongst the participants. This is a big problem and we are already thinking that we may have to take a step backwards to go forward again. Specifically, should we be arranging training in English at these early stages as opposed to teaching or management skills? Any advice out there?

Nostalgia & cheeseballs!

Our first day in Kathmandu this visit and already I'm "spaced out"!
I suppose it began well enough with the teacher's hotel booking at Kathmandu Guest House being re-confirmed and a breakfast meeting set up with Sujeev Shakya at the Summit Hotel for Wednesday morning.Since reading his book and an exchange of numerous emails over the last 6 months this is our first chance to get down to brass tacks with him regarding his opening of our programme next week. We also intend to discuss with him the vexing issue of our schools being dislocated from their communities and how to bring them together.

As far as the nostalgia bit is concerned we ventured for a light lunch into Freak Street to call into the Monumental Palace hotel with it's rooftop bar. For the non cognoscenti amongst you Freak Street was the original hippie tourist street with bars, restaurants and general drug dens from the 60's and 70's. Not that I ever went there (much) but I have a strong memory of getting my first fish & chips lunch in Freak Street over 30 years ago! Today we went to the rooftop bar to find the views completely blocked by high rise houses with water tanks and an order for a fanta and tuborg somehow getting translated into pancake and cheeseballs! Buddha help me but Champa and I still can't stop laughing 4 hours later ...... welcome to Nepal!
Now the photo. This is the inside of a brilliant tea shop close to Bishal Bazaar called Himalaya Tea Corner and run by Navin Maharjan and his wife.It is a brilliant tea shop for several reasons; firstly the variety of loose teas they sell from Nepal, India, Japan, China. Second the all round friendliness and helpfulness of the owners. Third ....... they will brew ANY tea for you to taste!! If you are interested in tea or this sort of experience this is a place well worth a visit, cheap too.

Regarding general progress this week, visiting the venue for our training programmes on Thursday morning, meeting with British Council on Friday afternoon, presentation to Chandagiri Rotary on Saturday morning and waiting for a date/time to meet people from the Nepal Economic Forum. Keep reading.

NSA Chairman blogs against corruption

The news from Nepal about corruption in the Ministry of Education and how it has adversely affected the country's School Sector Reform Plan, prompted Nepal Schools Aid chairman to pick up his blogging pen and write to the Nepal Economic Forum on the matter.

Self righteous anger doesn't get us anywhere, but at least his article cited other prominent Nepali writers who are starting to point the finger at Nepal's institutionalised corruption coupled with dereliction of duty on the part of some donors as well as offering this UK charity's prescription of values as a means to improve.

Read the article in full here at Nepal Economic Forum

School Sector Reform Plan 2009-2015

Just over a month to go now and we will be off to Kathmandu to deliver the teacher training programme we have developed jointly with Haverigg Primary School. For those of you not regular readers we have two courses, for teachers "Creating a learning environment" and for Head teachers "Managing change". You can see a detailed description on our main website at www.nepalschoolsaid.co.uk
Now, the Nepal Ministry of Education has recently published a far reaching document which is a reform plan of the entire education system 2009-2015. Specifically the plan covers Early Childhood Education, Basic & Secondary Education, Literacy & Lifelong Learning, Teacher Professional Development and a great deal more. From our viewpoint working with Primary Schools a great deal of the plan's focus is on the physical infrastructure of the school system, so it outlines standards on things like buildings, classrooms, toilets, furniture. It sets increasing standards for initial qualifications to become a teacher and the selection process for Head teachers. School management is focused on relationships with the School Management Committees, local communities, local councils, together with governance outlines, teacher contracts, mandatory school opening days, standards of teacher attendance and much more.
This document is most valuable to us in that it gives us a template for the development of our five supported schools as well as some idea of where we may best be able to assist the Ministry of Education in our future dealings with them.

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"!

A tale of two schools

Our final two school visits today before flying home for a well earned rest. One was more pleasant than the other and involved Bal Bigyan school. The visit to Sramik school was altogether different and included a bit of laying down the law about school hygiene and cleanliness as well as wanting to see a bit more effort on THEIR part to bring about school improvements. Unless we see some tangible efforts it could be curtains for further support from us.
The Bal Bigyan visit was to give them a start with their new library via a gift of around 75 books, mostly reading books for the children but also a small number of reference books for the teachers. The photo shows Champa handing over a selection to Parashu Baral the Head Teacher.
Once that had been done I managed to get myself persuaded to run a class for a while, my fame is spreading after the science lesson I gave last week! This time it was about the UK and I had a class discussion about the differences between the UK and Nepal, physical, cultural, religion etc. All in English thankfully.

Something for us, something for you.

Well that's just about the end of our month's work here and we are leaving with a new partner in ECCA, a better understanding of our schools and their needs, and with each school now understanding Nepal Schools Aid's focus and approach. We have had numerous meetings with Head Teachers, Staff, Management Committees, mostly amiable, sometimes "inter-planetary"!
Our next visit will be in April 2010, hopefully with some UK teachers running some skills workshops over several days. In anticipation of these visits we are leaving each school with some specific improvement objectives we would like them to work on. All are action based rather than outcome based so they are all within the means of each school provided they motivate themselves, which is quite a problem in Nepal anyway.
Firstly each school has two common objectives, first to develop a working relationship with ECCA as a means to influence their local communities to support and contribute to any improvement plans, and second to create a Nature Club within the school as part of the Water, Hygiene & Sanitation curriculum.In addition each school has some objectives specific to that school such as Bal Bigyan and Bal Kalyan creating a UK studies syllabus and space for a library which we will fund. If anyone would like to know more details then please email us.
In summary the schools know that we are now entering a phase of self development where we expect to see signs of self improvement as a condition of continuing and growing support from ourselves.

Nepal continues to suffer

Image by izahorsky via Flickr

In the middle of all our scurrying around schools and offices it's easy to forget that Nepal is still in the throes of a political crisis. Without boring everyone to death with the full background our regular readers will remember that the country is ruled by a 21 party coalition which currently excludes the Maoists who are the largest party with 30% + of the vote. Last April the Maoists were in power but a constitutional crisis led to their resignation from government and our leaving the country quickly in the face of a possible military coup.
Since then the Maoists have been a thorn in the side of government with daily blockages of parliament. Now they have announced a 12 day programme of protests using their youth organisation the Young Communist League (YCL). Starting on November 1st through to November 12th they have organised a schedule involving a torchlight procession, blockage of parliament, street protests, rallies, blockage of municipal offices and a blockade of the airport on 10th November, one day before we travel home!
Marvellous!

Videos and visions

Just back from another visit to Bal Bigyan school, initially as part of our plan to make a number of educational videos for some schools in the UK. The plan includes four specific videos related to Buddhism, Shopping, Schools and Kathmandu Central. Today's video included a "tour" around the school and a specific maths class taken by Bashu our sponsored teacher.
In addition we had an informal more relaxed chat with the Headmaster about his vision and plans for the school. He has been teaching at the school for 20 years now and cares passionately about it's performance. Specifically he has a vision to make the school the best in the district to which the permanent population will send their children and this includes:
1. Increasing the number of children attending, a big issue in Nepal
2. Enhancing the quality of education with a shift to child centred teaching as opposed to teacher centred
3. Building a new extension to the current school on their existing land which would allow them to include classes up to year 10 therefore becoming a secondary school.
In the case of this latter element the initial costings for the two storey extension are for about £20,000 of which they currently have found £3000.

 

When a PhD in chemistry comes in handy .....

Yesterday paid a short visit to our fifth supported school, Himalaya Secondary School in the centre of Kathmandu. This school is different from our others in that we support only 65 children out of the full 300 since these are the poorest with little or no personal support from anywhere else. The Head of the school takes in this many impoverished children in additional to those from the permanent community.
During our visit we entered a science class, Year 8, and I just couldn't resist having a go. These kids all spoke good English which was the medium used for their science lessons, which now includes a session on the periodic table of the elements from Dr B! (Sorry about the blurry picture, it was taken by the regular teacher who was presumably having a good laugh!)

A new partnership?

We have spent most of today with Yogendra Chitraker, Director ECCA, and one of his staff Sidhu visiting three schools they provide support to in Patan together with our own two schools also in Patan. Basically ECCA are a large Nepalese NGO who develop schools through helping them to network better within their own community and assisting them to set up nature and environment clubs and studies within the school.
Essentially we have much to gain by working together at no cost to each other. ECCA have 2000 "counsellors" employed around Nepal helping the poorest schools to achieve more through self motivation and we have realised today just how much we can work together without stepping on each others toes. Initially they will take Sramik and Bal Bigyan schools under their wing to help them maximise their potential withing their respective communities.
On our part we have access to a different network of professional teachers and volunteers from the UK and again we can work together to maximise efforts. For example a group of teachers from the UK could come to Nepal to run a skills programme attended by groups of their counsellors who in turn pass it on across the whole of Nepal!
More next week, its back to videoing tomorrow.

Tihar

Image via Wikipedia

Today is the last day of Tihar, or Diwali the festival of light as it is known in India. Comprising five days of fireworks, lit up buildings, feasting, and a series of special days to worship/pay respect to crows, dogs, cows, ones self and brothers.
Towards the end of this festival is Nepal Sambat, which in the Nepali calendar is New Year's Day in the year 1130. That was yesterday and in central Kathmandu was celebrated by the Newar people with a variety of programmes of music, dancing and feasting.
Today is Bhaia Tikka, or brother's day in which sisters respect their brothers with a small puja (religious ceremony/blessing) and food. In turn the brothers give their sisters a gift. We will be visiting one of Champa's sisters houses today for this event which according to the astrologers cannot take place until after 11.53 this morning.
On the schools work front it's back to work tomorrow with the schools opening again after the break. We have a visit scheduled with the help of our friends at ECCA, the education NGO, to a government school they have helped to influence the local municipality and is therefore now thriving. It should be a good benchmark for us and we will write up news of that visit tomorrow.

The last school

Kesh Chandra school in central Kathmandu was visited today, its the smallest school we support with around 100 pupils. As usual they are the children of migrant or itinerant workers so are extremely isolated from the permanent community.
They are housed in a community group owned building connected to a temple area and the owners want them out. Mind you, they have been trying for 20 years and not succeeded. However they have made life extremely uncomfortable for the school with a refusal to allow the connection of running water to the site or the building of a toilet.
Their needs apart from this are virtually identical to the three other schools we have visited and a few patterns are emerging. I will spend a few days thinking about all the data we have collected and create a summary report posted here for those who are interested.
So, at 1pm today, temperature 89 degrees, Champa and I ended a fairly intense three days of questions, questions, questions. I'm not sure of the UK equivalent but we have basically carried out an assessment on the management and teaching of four schools plus held a lengthy meeting with people connected to the Nepal Ministry of Education. To celebrate we dragged ourselves off to the renowned Fire & Ice restaurant for pizza and ice cream. The festival of Tihar starts tomorrow so it's a few days of relaxing and family socialising before we start again. Tomorrow it's barbecue night at Dwarika's to thank our family for all their organising of Sharon's wedding.

Education, education, education!

This afternoon's meeting was with Dr Chitraker (Chairman of ECCA) and Mrs Shrestha, the recent Under Secretary for Education. For our non regular readers, ECCA are the organisation who helped us to run the 5 day training programme on Water & Sanitation Education for 12 teachers in our schools. Unfortunately Dr Poudel, the current Under Secretary was called away to the Ministry so we are arranging a further meeting with him.
Our primary objectives were to develop understanding of the education system in Nepal and to seek influence to facilitate further State aid for our schools.
We spent some time outlining our background, our broad strategy and our current processes before making a summary of what we see our schools receiving and ..... what they appear to NOT be receiving from the State.
Much to our amazement Dr Chitraker explained that it was NOT the government's fault if the schools weren't receiving their full dues!! But, he explained that in Nepal the onus is on the schools to directly seek out government support based on a clear understanding of what they are entitled to. So, part of what ECCA do is to "educate" school heads about how to engage with government and work their way through Nepal's labyrinthine bureaucracy!!!! Amazing.
But, he immediately offered to show us some schools as examples who they have helped to help themselves AND to begin a programme of educating the Heads in our schools to do the same.
In addition we talked at some length about professional development for teachers and that despite having a National Teacher Development Centre outside Kathmandu and having 30 Regional Centre, the teacher development programme is "a pile of crap"! Well, Mrs Shrestha didn't actually say that but that was what she meant.
So, here's a possible deal: Can WE help to facilitate some UK Heads/teachers, maybe backed by their Education Authority, who would like to work on such a programme?
Are you there Janice, Nerissa, Stella? Anybody on Skype?