Inclusive education in Nepal

On 19 June 2022, the Faculty of Education, Tribhuvan University organised a seminar to disseminate preliminary findings of the study in Lalitpur. The dissemination seminar was attended by appropriately 60 researchers, academics from various universities, officials from the Ministry of Education and its constituent departments such as Curriculum Development Centre. Jaypuri Gharti, a key member of the Education Select Committee of the Federal Parliament of Nepal was the chief guest of the event. The delegates were welcomed by Professor Dr Chitra Bahadur Budhathoki, the Dean of Faculty of Education, Tribhuvan University followed by an introduction to the research project by Dr Tejendra Pherali, a member of the project team. Bidhan Acharya, the Senior Researcher from Social and Academic Innovations (SAIPL) and Professor Aadne Asland from Oslo Metropolitan University, Norway led the presentation on research design and discussed some preliminary findings based on the survey data. Acharya described the challenges around collecting data during the pandemic but reported that the use of Kobo-tool proved to be an effective way of recording data directly from the participants. He showed that the frequency of parental interactions with teachers is correlated with levels of inclusion and government actors enthusiastically reported that schools had improved since the local governments were elected under the federal constitution 2017. Another interesting finding from the survey was that rural municipalities respond to the needs of schools more responsibly than their urban counterparts, indicating some positive signs of educational improvement in rural areas. Professor Basu Dev Kafle, Assistant Professors Pitambar Acharya, Ram Chandra Giri and Yadav Prasad Acharya presented a paper on ‘Inclusion of students from resources classes to general classes including transitioning’. They argued that the children with disability had largely been neglected in Nepal’s education system and most of the integrated and special needs schools lacked basic resources and trained educators to meet their students’ learning needs. Dr Pramod Bhatta from the Department of Sociology, Tribhuvan University and Professor Arild Schou from the University of Eastern Norway presented a paper on ‘Local government’s understanding and practice of inclusive education in Nepal.’ They pointed out that the local governments had primarily focused on infrastructure development projects such as building roads and school classrooms whilst most of the educational funds had been spent on paying the temporary contract teachers who were recruited to support expansion of school grades. To create truly inclusive classrooms, schools needed more resources, professional development programmes for teachers and most importantly, they needed to take the responsibility to improve quality of learning for children from the most disadvantaged communities. Jaypuri Gharti, a member of the federal parliament praised the research team for conducting such an important study that would help the government formulate new education policies focusing on inclusion. She emphasised that researchers had to engage with law makers to facilitate policy change, otherwise, the research would not make the desired impact. She expressed that the lawmakers were genuinely interested in formulating policies that could improve educational outcomes for historically disadvantaged communities and it was the right moment to hold dialogue between educational researchers and parliamentarians. The seminar was concluded by Professor Shiva Lal Bhusal, the Rector of Tribhuvan University. For more information, refer blogpost on https://www.ienepal.org/