There is a good Chinese proverb that says if you are planning for years - sows rice, for ten years — plant trees and for a hundred years—educates the people. The development of education has played an important part in Asian economic expansion. The university student study and subject themselves to assessments to gauge the level of depth of their understanding, knowledge and skills. That type of formal studying situation will test, grade and award qualifications on the basis of whether the individual has reached an agreed and measurable standard. The main thing is that studying concerned with the acquisition of knowledge, attitude and value, emotional, responses and skills. The awards and punishment levelled to them in the past will affect their motivation and attitudes towards learning in present. The 1991 population census of Nepal reported that 5,958,748 or 39.3 percent were literate amongst those aged 6 years and above. According to the 2001 population census, such literates reached to 11,481,6003. In other words, that data shows that it has been doubled in a decade. Out of these, 90.1 percent were able to both read and write while 9.9 percent were able to only read. The average literacy rate has now reached 59.6 percent. Similarly during the 1991-2001 decade, the number of the highly educated also increased. According to the 1991 census, the number of those educated at the graduate level and above was 96,977. The 2001 census revealed that the number of those receiving such high education had reached 352,2434 or an increase of 3.6 times. Out of that number, 78.7 percent were of graduate level and 21.3 percent of post-graduate level. This is a very good starting point of Nepal’s development.
The private sector was re-allowed into education after about a decade-long experience-in-failure of nationalized education under t
he so-called New Education Policy of early 1970s in Nepal. Dr. Tirth Raj Khaniya says his view, despite a two-decade long involvement into this field the private sector in education is still at infancy and confused. Most of the teachers in government school motivated less by professional ethics and more by party politics so that our current education cannot depend entirely on the government school, technical education and University for quality education. The books prepared in the style of the grandfather are taught by the teachers who are of the father’s age. And the poor students of today are always at loss as to what is being taught to them in government school. However, the new law has left education as a battlefield of the private and the public sectors. The policymakers have kept the government as the producer of education whereas logically it should be the buyer only.
The government current policy in which the people should have been left free to choose the type of higher education. Government should create such an environment to the people have been made to bear the expenses as well for such education could help to improve the education quality and competition between government and private school/college/university. It will make people ready to pay for such education because with this sort of education they are sure of being employed and recovering the expenses in future. However, as everybody would not be able to afford the full cost of such education, the government should develop a mechanism to make it affordable for everyone interested. Such mechanism can be a system of scholarship or loan facility or a combination of both. If it is a scholarship, it is a case of education being bought by the society; if it is loan-financed the implication is that the person who pays the loan can appropriate the benefits as he/she wishes. Nepal’s experience in sending people to good educational institutes for higher level technical education, such as Medicine and Engineering can be regarded as the example of how the scholarship system can be used.
But the problem in education in Nepal is not only the cost. In closer scrutiny, it can be found that cost is not the problem at all. If the courses offered are such that the person who receives the education is going to be employable immediately after completing the course, meeting the cost is only a matter of arranging the loan from a bank or elsewhere.
The next issue of debate in education is quality and that is related with the cost. People complain, for example, that the students who come out of the private schools pass with good marks in the examination but lack the analytical capability. In other word we can say that education always has a cost attached to it, and better the quality of education, the higher is the cost likely to be. Better teachers and better methodologies of teaching will be available at a higher cost. The implication is that, if we maintain on reducing the cost, the quality also will suffer.
Of course, we can take an example so far as Japan, where the educational priorities and the rights of citizens and residents against the local authorities to provide school education assumed a leading role in the beginning of rapid economic expansion. Let us take one good example in this issue, as a whole education consumed as much as 43 per cent of the budgets of the towns and villages between 1906 and 1911 for Japan. In this period in Japan, the progress of elementary education in particular was rapid, and the recruiting army officers noted the remarkable fact that while in 1893 one third of the army recruits were illiterate similarly by 1906 there was hardly anyone who was not literate. By 1913, though Japan was economically still quite underdeveloped and very poor. It had become one of the largest producers of books in the world publishing more books than Britain and indeed more than twice as many books as the United States. To a great extent the fast economic expansion of East and South-east Asia has drawn on the lessons of these experiences, particularly through the arrangements associated with the enhancement of human resources and skill. These developments were at once social (they deal with education and other social opportunities) and economic (they influenced economic performance), as well as legal (they were associated with creating a pattern of rights and duties which influenced the lives of citizen).
Another interesting area, which has come into importance very recently in context of Nepal, is India’s rapid success in the development of computer software (India has become the second largest software producer in the world after the United States). This process has been made possible not only by the expansion of technical education in India, but also by the comparatively flexible legal arrangements that govern these businesses compared with the much more rigid regulations that apply to more traditional commerce and industrial production, in which progress has been much slower.
References:
The private sector was re-allowed into education after about a decade-long experience-in-failure of nationalized education under t
he so-called New Education Policy of early 1970s in Nepal. Dr. Tirth Raj Khaniya says his view, despite a two-decade long involvement into this field the private sector in education is still at infancy and confused. Most of the teachers in government school motivated less by professional ethics and more by party politics so that our current education cannot depend entirely on the government school, technical education and University for quality education. The books prepared in the style of the grandfather are taught by the teachers who are of the father’s age. And the poor students of today are always at loss as to what is being taught to them in government school. However, the new law has left education as a battlefield of the private and the public sectors. The policymakers have kept the government as the producer of education whereas logically it should be the buyer only.The government current policy in which the people should have been left free to choose the type of higher education. Government should create such an environment to the people have been made to bear the expenses as well for such education could help to improve the education quality and competition between government and private school/college/university. It will make people ready to pay for such education because with this sort of education they are sure of being employed and recovering the expenses in future. However, as everybody would not be able to afford the full cost of such education, the government should develop a mechanism to make it affordable for everyone interested. Such mechanism can be a system of scholarship or loan facility or a combination of both. If it is a scholarship, it is a case of education being bought by the society; if it is loan-financed the implication is that the person who pays the loan can appropriate the benefits as he/she wishes. Nepal’s experience in sending people to good educational institutes for higher level technical education, such as Medicine and Engineering can be regarded as the example of how the scholarship system can be used.
But the problem in education in Nepal is not only the cost. In closer scrutiny, it can be found that cost is not the problem at all. If the courses offered are such that the person who receives the education is going to be employable immediately after completing the course, meeting the cost is only a matter of arranging the loan from a bank or elsewhere.
The next issue of debate in education is quality and that is related with the cost. People complain, for example, that the students who come out of the private schools pass with good marks in the examination but lack the analytical capability. In other word we can say that education always has a cost attached to it, and better the quality of education, the higher is the cost likely to be. Better teachers and better methodologies of teaching will be available at a higher cost. The implication is that, if we maintain on reducing the cost, the quality also will suffer.
Of course, we can take an example so far as Japan, where the educational priorities and the rights of citizens and residents against the local authorities to provide school education assumed a leading role in the beginning of rapid economic expansion. Let us take one good example in this issue, as a whole education consumed as much as 43 per cent of the budgets of the towns and villages between 1906 and 1911 for Japan. In this period in Japan, the progress of elementary education in particular was rapid, and the recruiting army officers noted the remarkable fact that while in 1893 one third of the army recruits were illiterate similarly by 1906 there was hardly anyone who was not literate. By 1913, though Japan was economically still quite underdeveloped and very poor. It had become one of the largest producers of books in the world publishing more books than Britain and indeed more than twice as many books as the United States. To a great extent the fast economic expansion of East and South-east Asia has drawn on the lessons of these experiences, particularly through the arrangements associated with the enhancement of human resources and skill. These developments were at once social (they deal with education and other social opportunities) and economic (they influenced economic performance), as well as legal (they were associated with creating a pattern of rights and duties which influenced the lives of citizen).
Another interesting area, which has come into importance very recently in context of Nepal, is India’s rapid success in the development of computer software (India has become the second largest software producer in the world after the United States). This process has been made possible not only by the expansion of technical education in India, but also by the comparatively flexible legal arrangements that govern these businesses compared with the much more rigid regulations that apply to more traditional commerce and industrial production, in which progress has been much slower.
References:
Prof. Sen’s lecture on "What is the role of legal and judicial reform in the development process?" The copy was provided by Focal Point for Financial Sector Reforms, Corporate and Financial Governance Project, Ministry of Finance, HMG of Nepal).
Business Age Nepal, Aprial 2002
Dr. Harka Bahadur Gurung's article about Nepal's Education and Languages.
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