Letter to Education Minister — Stop the propaganda; start tangible actions

Dear Education Minister

I am surprised to read your statement that all government employees should enroll their children in public schools and the decision of your party that all leaders will not enroll their children in private and expensive schools. I am confused on whether the statement is for bringing revolutionary changes in the public schools or just a publicity stunt.

As you are a leader with high moral and ethical standards, I don’t dare to question your intention as I presume that this must have been said with good intention but I get confused after looking at the quality of education in public schools albeit with a few exceptions. I come from a background of public schools so I have high respect for them and the students studying in it, but the quality of education is deteriorating every day. There is no responsibility on the part of teachers as they are divided on the basis of political parties and their affiliation with the party is taken as a license to cover their wrongdoings. The situation is such in some schools that the head teacher does not dare take action against even an office helper due to political affiliation as he/she will face political pressure if they do so.

We got democracy but we are promoting the culture of mobocracy in the name of democracy. The students are also divided based on political ideology from the primary level, which I consider totally wrong. Although they have choice of being involved in political activities, they should do it when they are mature enough to decide what is wrong and what is right. Excuse me for blaming but I believe that your party along with all political parties have been using children to fulfill vested political interests rather than for their development.

I want to come back to the issue of public schools. Dear Minister, your thought is very positive as currently, sending children to private schools is not a choice but a compulsion for many Nepali people. They are compelled to do so with the hope of a better future for their children. If you look at the public schools, you have more public holidays than working days. Such schools do not have regular class and textbooks, so computers and Internet are a distant dream for students. The teachers are more involved in politics than on their duties. You might have read the news that many students at public schools do not get textbooks till the end of academic year. I have had a very bitter experience of being engaged in needs assessment of public schools in Morang district. During the needs assessments, most of the teachers and officials of the school management committee mentioned that students are decreasing in the public schools as there is no teaching in English and there are no computers and Internet facilities at the schools. However to my surprise, when talking about their needs, they requested funds for constructing more school blocks and purchasing furniture. The simple answer for this is that they can make money while constructing school blocks and purchasing furniture. It seems they don’t want to improve the quality of education. These are just a few examples of the problems faced by public schools.

The private education sector is also not very scientific in Nepal and there are many weaknesses in private institutions but they have been able to deliver some quality education to the students. They organize extra classes and curtail regular leave days to cover the courses. However, there are many irregularities like charging high fees and other expenses from the parents, not paying necessary salary to the teachers and staff. These are some examples of cheating by the private schools. This is happening due to weak monitoring mechanism of the state. Despite having many challenges parents do not have any alternative than sending their children to private academic institutions as they do not want to compromise on the future of their children.

Dear Education Minister, your statement is true if we improve the quality of public schools, many children will go there and boarding schools will face competition forcing them to improve and change their policies. There are many youths in the country that were unable to complete their education due to various reasons, so if they were given some technical or vocational skills it will help to improve their livelihoods. Currently, nearly 1,500 youths are deserting the country every day due to lack of employment opportunities here. However there is a huge need of technical human resources in the country and most of the demand is met by hiring Indian people and sending a huge amount of money there.

Dear Education Minister, I don’t know whether you made this statement after your party took the decision without proper knowledge about the problems being faced by this sector or you want to grab the attention of the media after failing to do something positive. If you are really serious about improving the quality of education, you should start with basic things like ensuring the supply of text books before the beginning of the academic session, maintain a proper academic calendar and implement it, open vocational training institutions in each region and provide some sort of technical training to all the youths going abroad and seeking employment at home. You can initiate some measures for reforming the public educational institutions like introducing a performance appraisal system for teachers and also hiring quality human resources on contract basis to provide quality education. Similarly, you can give relief to parents by effectively monitoring the private educational institutions and taking action against institutions cheating students and parents. As your party has joined the political mainstream after leaving the decade long armed insurgency some nine years ago, sorry to say that I feel that you are yet to leave the propaganda tactics of wartime. Please let the parents decide in which school they want to send their children. Although I would love to send my children to public schools, I won’t do so at the moment as sending them to public schools is ruining their future. Rather than your baseless and sensational statement, you could have initiated some measures to improve public schools and monitor the private schools.

Dear Education Minister, you may not get media attention at present but you will be remembered for generations if you initiate some good measures in the education sector. If you do not have the capacity of making any changes in this sector, please be silent and spend your time in the office without making baseless statements. Although I am not pessimistic, but frankly speaking, we just got many leaders and only chaos after all the political changes in the country due to vision-less political leaders and failure also on the part of people to oppose the propaganda spread by the politicians. Remember, you cannot always fool the people, so Education Minister; please refrain from spreading propaganda and showing big dreams, rather start from very small things which can bring tangible changes in the education sector and society. Please forgive me if my words are harsh and might have hurt your feelings.

Yours Sincerely
A Nepali Guardian

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