On average, around 85 percent of public school teachers in Nepal are trained whereas the corresponding figure for private schools stands at around 15 percent. Public school teachers are better paid and have greater job security. Yet the public school system has consistently failed students. Before the SLC exams were phased out in 2016, only an average of 28 percent of public school students made it through the ‘Iron Gate’ for higher education. Our public school system has a huge management problem. Absenteeism is high both among students and teachers, and there is a general lack of discipline. Public school teacher unions are highly politicized and teachers use political connections to land secure jobs without much commitment to teach. In many cases, qualified teachers use an unqualified substitute to fill in while they go about other business. Again all these boil down to an ineffective school management that does not enforce rules and standards.
Private schools, on the other hand, are driven by profit and profit is directly linked to the performance of their students at regional and national level exams. But even the education the private schools provide (with some exceptions) cannot be called quality education by any stretch. What they are good at is getting students high marks in routine exams. There is very little critical thinking and problem-solving.
Still most students from private schools end up doing well academically and professionally. The same however isn’t true for students from public schools.Schools are supposed to provide a level-playing field, yet our system does the opposite. It creates two classes of students (three, if you count the elite private schools).
To be fair, there have been efforts to reform school education but the problem is that they have been primarily focused on increasing enrollment. Some incremental reforms have been achieved through initiatives such as the School Sector Reform Program, but they do not go far enough. Nepal’s education system requires a massive overhaul, not gradual improvements.
There are several policy choices before the government, all of which require strong commitment to address head on the politicization of teachers’ union. One would hope that the new left government, which could have a two-thirds majority with Sanghiya Samajwadi Forum Nepal, would have no problem taking on the unions that have stalled reforms.
An autonomous school board or school management committee for public schools can be established—giving it broad authority to run its affairs, while linking grant transfers to performance standards and enrolment rates. Parallel to this, the government can bring another scheme involving a voucher system whereby anyone interested in enrolling their children in private schools receives a government voucher covering fees and other expenses but subject to a means testing of income. These vouchers can be linked to the poverty card and national social security register, which will reduce the cumbersome and lengthy process of means testing. This will force the public schools to remain competitive to receive grants or risk closure.
Clearly there is no one–size–fits– all solution. What will work in certain communities may not work in others. The key here is instilling a sense of competitiveness in the public school system through different incentives, and linking them to the local government’s overall performance. When the central government adopts required policy reforms, it can use conditional fiscal transfers to incentivize implementation of these reforms. Where the first overhaul approach fails, the government could consider outsourcing the management of public schools to the private sector—linking certain percentage of management fee to performance standards and enrollment rates. The idea of managing even a small percentage of nearly 30,000 community schools, where the first option does not work, could be attractive for many private sector management companies.
Profits can drive competitiveness. If spending a little more on management fee (increasing current education spending of about 4 percent of GDP to the global standard of 4.9 percent) delivers good education for the vast majority of students, wouldn’t that be a worthwhile investment?
