It’s an open secret how pathetically the speed of education reforms in most part of the developing countries is at a Tortoise despite billions of dollars of foreign aids on education. In countries like Nepal, especially after the restoration of democracy in 90’s, reforms were obviously made in education sectors, however, they are proving to be simply unsustainable. Mushrooming growth of private English Medium Schools took off and at one point, we could find an English Medium Primary Schools in almost every village in Nepal. This movement abruptly ended in most rural communities due to Maoist demand to completely abolish private schools. I myself was one of the victims. I had to change three schools at completely different places in three years just to complete my 8th, 9th and 10th grades of secondary education. Their demands seemed right at the moment because private schools were in the verge of producing elite vs. non-elite citizens. More than 90% of the time, private schools have outpaced public schools in terms of educational performance. Private schools are privately owned by an individual or run through partnerships. They have curriculum based in English, majority imported from India and the course materials even for kids in primary schools are highly demanding. However, those private schools run under capitalistic model. They charge fees and considering the fact that 40% of the populations are poor, they can’t send their kids to expensive private schools when they have many other basic things to cover from the nominal income they make every day. On the other hand, though, public schools are free, they lack resources and management is very poor. Most of the time, they are overpopulated, don’t run through the whole academic year and are not held accountable if they fail to meet the educational performance standards. What is really worrisome is because of this dualistic education system of public and private schools, the situation of Nepal is going to become even worse. We are producing two breeds of citizens within a single nation: first one elite attending private schools and second breed of non-elites who are ill- prepared to explore any opportunities life has to offer.
To make this matter even more solid, I want to go through my own story. I was one of the first breeds of private school goers of 90’s when one of my grandfathers opened Dawning English Boarding School in our community. Though, the monthly fee was under $20.00 per year (inflation not adjusted), I was among five or six of the entire 50-60 kids of my age of my village who attended Dawning English Boarding School on 1992. Of course there was an awareness element that has to be factored in. Most parents simply didn’t think investing in their kid’s education was a great idea; instead, they would be employed for household works. Now the awareness level has tremendously increased that even those who make barely enough money for their living send their kids to good private schools by compromising their other basic needs. When I look back to my friends from Dawning days, majority of them have done well in academics. Three of my friends from Dawning finished their Medical School, three of us including myself finished Engineering, some are finishing up their MBA’s, some decided to join British Military (Gurkha Regiment) and those who didn’t study well are also making good money working elsewhere. We were among the first batch of Dawning kids, more are coming out and they seem to be doing well. I still remember dating back 12-15 years into my community, being a doctor or an engineer was almost a rare miraculous phenomenon. Private education, hence have definitely opened opportunities to do well in their academics to those who could afford the education. While, many of my friends who attended public schools didn’t even make it through 10th grade. And this is what that makes me really sad. It’s not that my friends who I went to at our village’s Punnyajan Primary School for a year before enrolling at Dawning were not capable enough. They were in fact equally smart as I was or my other doctor/engineer friends. What they were not were, they were deprived of resources and the opportunities that Dawning goers had and their futures almost ended by the time they were at 10th grade and had to fall down into another cycle of poverty that their parents were going through.
In the meantime, solution is not trivial considering the intensity of the problem. Government lacks resources as much as those poor citizens do where more than 50% of their annual budget comes from foreign aids. It’s also not true that we have not seen the spate of foreign aids: we have had them, but the simple reality is, they are either not effective enough or not spent prudently. Studies have shown that more than 60% of those foreign aids go back to the donor country in the forms of salaries and operating costs. On the other hand, too much reliance on foreign aid is also likely to create a permanent dependency on foreign nations. Also, foreign assistance especially in education and infrastructures has proven to be unsustainable because of the lack of knowledge transfer. Foreign aids assisted projects do not perform well after the donors finish the projects and hand over to the governments. Since private schools are not affordable enough for majority of population,wheras government is not in a situation to allocate its very limited resources in education and foreign aids are on education have also not proven to be effective, I propose a public-private investment in education.
The rationale behind this is instead of few individuals owning a school, community owns it. Like President Lincoln granted land for many public universities, government can grant land to build physical infrastructures. The startup capital investment can be raised through donations on any forms. More than those local resources can be routed indirectly in order to sustain the long-term viability of institution. As of now, Nepal has not exploited its natural resources on any degree. There is no doubt with the scale of economic opportunities Nepal bears with its water and forest resources. Metallurgy and of course tourism are also big possibilities for investments. When investment is made from individuals, government, foreign direct investments or by any other parties, the local community will own some stakes on those investments in return for exploiting their local resources. The revenue from their investment can be used to run not only educational but many other services for the locals by the locals. This sort of private-public partnership on investment will also provide employment opportunities for local people based on their skills. More than that, the local community will also have a feeling of ownership not only on the community institutions like schools but also over the investments made to utilize the local resources which will more likely avoid local protests over many corporate investments that have been experienced in many parts of India, most recently in West Bengal over Tata Nano Plant. This type of model can be applied not only to education sectors but also for social ventures like health care, microfinance, …………..and will prove win-win games for both the citizens and the government of Nepal.
Sushil Khadka
Thanks to Sudip Khadka and Shilshila Acharya
