quaility versus quantity education

Quality versus quantity education . Kathmandu, The Kathmandu Post, 11/4/2003, p.5


As a Belgian student in development co-operation, I came to Nepal a month ago to learn about the Nepali education system and the role of the conflict on this system. Sometimes people asked me to explain the differences between Nepali education and education in Belgium. It may be difficult to give an overview of all the differences, but I did find some characteristics that sometimes surprised me. Of course, the statistical differences like number of children going to school are there. But I found other problems that mainly have an impact on the quality of education. Education is much politicised in Nepal. Many teachers I met are part of a political party; and often in small villages, the teacher was also the only political figure. Their position and authority is very high in small communities since they are often the only educated people. Through teaching they can spread the ideology of their political party. After finding this, it didn’t surprise me anymore why teachers were frequently threatened, blackmailed and attacked by Maoists (at least before the recent cease-fire). Which does not mean I agree with this, but education seems to be a way to spread ideology by both Maoists and other political parties.
A long-term vision on education is also not supported when with every new government the whole educational institutions get restructured. Bureaucrats and administration should not at all be linked with any political party but should be an objective and neutral team of experts who are able to design, implement and control the long-term planning to provide a quality national education. I agree that the number of illiterate and the number of girls going to school are problems but quality education is equally important to bring development and progress.

Another complaint I heard from many Nepali people is that the curriculum is old,
theoretical and not fit to the heterogeneity of the Nepali society. Since education in
Belgium is much older (the first university is 577 years old), we have gradually came to a
very differentiated and flexible curriculum with a lot of options and choices to be made
by the students themselves. In Nepal I found that you could only really start to specify your
study when you enter grade 11 since before that you can only choose two optional subjects.
The process of adapting the curriculum to society still has a long way to go and
will be essential to bring quality education. The use of having to learn difficult
mathematics or poems of Shakespeare, which even English students don’t have to learn, in
a remote rural village where there is an urgent need to learn how to stop erosion and
improve agricultural production seems pretty low to me. Tourism, computer-education,
rural development, agricultural techniques, local languages and so on are not included in
the curriculum. Regional, religious, language, social and economical differences in the
Nepali society are completely ignored in an wrong attempt to copy the western style
education.

So my opinion is that it is wrong and narrow-minded to put all the money and energy in
providing education for all by 2015 and free education if this bad state of education prevails.
The donor community also has a responsibility in this since looking at some nice
statistics and being satisfied with it is not what development is about. Nepal needs a more
differentiated, de-politicized and decentralized education with input from grassroots level
to change the curriculum. It should be suitable for every region, religion, sex, language or
ethnicity. The government, civil society, teachers and the donor community must
make an effort to do more than only set some far away good looking goals and then feel
comfortable with statistics.

(The author is a student in development co-operation at University of Ghent, Belgium)