Education in Nepal
 |
|
| Budget | $98.64 million |
|---|---|
| Primary languages | Nepali |
| System type | Central |
| Establishment Enacted Last amended |
Education Act August 9, 1971 January 28, 2004 |
| Total | 65.9 |
| Male | 75.1 |
| Female | 57.4 |
| Total | 6,373,003 |
| Primary | 4,030,045 |
| Secondary | 2,195,8352 |
| Post secondary | 147,123 |
| Secondary diploma | 46.2% |
| Post-secondary diploma | unavailable |
Education in Nepal was long based on home schooling and Gurukula. The first formal school was established in 1853, but was intended for the elites. The birth of the Nepalese democracy in 1951 opened the classrooms to a more diverse population.
The education plan in 1971 dramatically hastened the development of education in the country. In 1951, Nepal had 10,000 students in just 300 schools with an adult literacy rate of 5%. By 2010, the number of schools increased to 49,000 and by 2015 the adult literacy rate jumped to 63.9%% (female: 53.1%, male: 76.4%) Poverty, social exclusion of women, lower caste discrimination, and indigenous biases are nowadays the primary constraints to an equitable access to education.
The Ministry of Education is the apex body responsible for initiating and managing education activities in the country. The Minister of Education (assisted by the State/Assistant Minister), provides political leadership to the Ministry. The Ministry, as a part of the government bureaucracy, is headed by the Secretary of Education and consists of the central office, various functional offices, and offices located at the regional and district levels. The Central Office of the Ministry is mainly responsible for policy development, planning, monitoring, and evaluation regarding different aspects of education.
The Ministry has established five Regional Directorates and 75 District Education Offices in five development regions and 75 districts respectively. This was done with the intention of bringing education administration closer to the people. These decentralized offices are responsible for overseeing informal and school-level education activities in their respective areas. Regional Directorates are mainly responsible for coordination and monitoring as well as the evaluation of educational activities, while the District Education Offices are primarily responsible for implementation services.
The National Center for Educational Development (NCED) is an apex body for teacher training in Nepal. There are 34 Educational Training Centers (ETCs) under NCED to support the teachers in pedagogical areas.
Legally, there are two types of schools in the country: community and institutional. Community schools receive regular government grants whereas institutional schools are funded by the schools themselves or other non-governmental sources. Institutional schools are organized either as a non-profit trust or as a company. However, in practical terms, schools are mainly of two types: public (community) and private (institutional).
The third type of school is the kind run by the local people who are enthusiastic about having a school in their locality. They do not receive regular government grants and most of them do not have any other sustainable financial source. Supported and managed by the local people, they can be thus identified as the real community schools.
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