Postconflict Educational Framework in Nepal: Needs and Possibilities

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Post-conflict Educational Framework in Nepal
Needs and Possibilities

• Presentation by
• Tejendra J. Pherali
• Liverpool John Moores University, UK
• Email T.Pherali_at_2007.ljmu.ac.uk
• Tel [phone]

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Objectives of this Chhalphal

• Motivation for this presentation My background
  as a student in a government school, teacher in
  government/ private school, education in
  different countries and doctoral study in
  educational studies with emphasis on education in
  Nepal
• To contribute to the debate of transition/
  post-conflict educational restructuring
• To discuss the two faces of education in the
  context of Nepals conflict
• To emphasize the needs and highlight some key
  issues for post-conflict educational framework in
  Nepal

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Some Educational Statistics

• Modern schooling began only after 1951
• Rapid growth in number of schools
• Adult literacy 48
• 15-19 year olds 86 males 64 females
• 14 25 year olds 30 are illiterate (two third
  are female)
• Only 21 teachers are fully trained
• Enrolment
• 72 - primary
• 29 - lower secondary and
• 15 - secondary
• Dropout reasons 32 poor academic progress,
  27 help at home and 12 too expensive
• 14 dropout due to the fear of physical
  punishment (?) -Human development in Asia (Haq
  Haq, 1998).
• 82 attend gov/community schools Vs 17 private
  education

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Education and conflict relationship
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The two faces of Education Assessing Nepalese
education

• Education for positive change
• Literacy and numeracy as basic life skills
• Teaching common social values
• Creating employment and economic well being
• Very little is known about educations role in
  preventing conflict International Save the
  Childrens Where peace begins Educations role
  in conflict prevention and peacebuilding , INEE
  Education in Fragile states Task
• Educations negative face
• Exclusion in education (gender, castes,
  geography, language etc.)
• uneven distribution of education education as a
  weapon in cultural repression, denial of
  education as a weapon of war, manipulating
  history for political purposes, manipulating
  textbooks, self-worth and hating others,
  segregated education to ensure inequality,
  lowered esteem and stereotyping
• Schooling as violence- corporal punishment,
  scary teacher
• Approach to learning reproductive, memorization
  (What questions?)
• Hierarchical school structure
• principal, teachers, students
• Authoritative indoctrination,

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Impact of Armed Conflict on Education

• Since 1990, 90 of deaths related to armed
  conflict has been civilians and 80 of them are
  children and women (UNICEF, 2006)
• More than 2 million children have died and six
  millions have been disabled or seriously injured
• Two-thirds of school teachers were either killed
  or fled in Rwanda
• Almost all secondary school teachers in Timor
  Leste left due to conflict
• Land mines in some school premises in Angola and
  Columbia have become no-go areas
• The impact is more qualitative than
  quantitative
• A challenge to meet EFA goal just impossible to
  meet the deadline!
• Resilience of education system- it never comes to
  stand still (exception Cambodia)
• Alternative rebel schools (El Salvador,
  Guatemala, Sri Lanka, Nepal)

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Impact of armed conflict on education in Nepal

• Frequent strikes causing education shutdown
• Attacks on school buildings and education offices
  (79 schools, one university, 13 district
  education offices destroyed between the period of
  January 2002 and December 2006
• 32 suffered bomb explosions and at least 3
  schools were caught in crossfire )
• Children killed, tortured and abducted (331
  students were murdered, over 30,000 were
  abducted)
• Teachers abused in front of students and killed
  (145 teachers were killed in the conflict decade)
• Teachers being arrested, tortured and disappeared

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What is still important to know?

• Qualitative impacts on children difficult to
  establish (trauma, irritation, frustration, loss
  of memory, etc. )
• Impacts of teachers are they still motivated?
  How they feel about the past? Is everything back
  to normalcy now?
• Impacts of school leaders
• Impacts on educational authorities
• Impacts on educational planning

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Needs Policy change

• Important to analyse
• Background of conflict
• Social divisions (eg. Gender, educational,
  ethnic, economic, social, language, political
  etc.)
• Nature of conflict (eg. Type, scale, intensity,
  duration, ideological or identity-based etc.?)
• Nature of peace (how did the conflict end? peace
  accord, defeat, education/ curriculum reform
  mentioned in the agreement etc.?)
• Rewriting the history

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Nature of institutions

• What to emphasize in education?
• Conservative pluralism emphasizing
  similarities, a view that all citizens share a
  common humanity avoiding overt expression of
  cultural, social and regional identity.
• Liberal pluralism accepting differences between
  people celebration of diversity, diverse
  symbols and expressions of identity juxtaposed
• Critical pluralism recognizing similarities and
  differences between, also acknowledging power
  relations between groups
• Teachers balance in new recruitments,
  sustaining the change!

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Important Considerations

• The curriculum learning outcomes - Culture,
  history, geography, literature etc.
• Language in curriculum, teaching and learning
• Peace education as a subject of study conflict
  resolution skills, appreciation to diversity,
  importance to social cohesion
• Teaching methods and balancing attitudes in
  teaching and learning
• Donors expectations
• Nature of management system (centralized/
  decentralized/ decision-making authority)
• Structure of school system (segregated/
  integrated)

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Peacebuilding skills

• Education reflecting social reality
• Attitude to conflict
• Learning peacebuilding skills at schools
• Bringing people together across dividing lines
  dialogue to solve problems
• Education for democracy
• Multi-cultural and inter-cultural education

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Youth Involvement

• Youth participation in policy-making and
  curriculum design
• Review on hierarchical relationship between youth
  and adults
• Youth participation in community level
  decision-making
• Community ownership of schools and increased
  role of schools in the community
• Youth leadership community integration and
  peacebuilding
• Gender, caste, ethnicity to be addressed
  carefully

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What can be done to promote this debate?

• A comprehensive study to look at schooling Nepal
  from conflict perspective
• Regular and rigorous debates on how to take
  necessary steps for educational reforms in Nepal
• Nepalese academia should play proactive role
• The role of the media in the educational debate
  in new Nepal
• Government leadership to collaborate with donor
  agencies, experts and communities
• Education agenda should go in parallel with
  political debate
• An international conference on Nepals
  post-conflict reconstruction
• By the time of writing education, the debate gets
  to a proper shape

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Lets do some chhalphal!