by Arandeep Degun, AIWC Cologne
Tiny, mountainous and landlocked, Nepal lies between two giant countries, India and China. Nepal is known for its distinctive geography as “a land of diversity.” Few countries as small as Nepal have such incredible contrasts and complexities. The glamorous beauty of Nepal is exposed by its landscapes: dense swampy forests, lush green valleys, bleak alpine highlands, splashing rivers and fantastic snow peaks. Nepal has a wide variety of flora and fauna. Nepal is proud to have a rich cultural heritage, as well.
Educationally, Nepal’s efforts to reduce disparities across the education sector are bearing fruit: in the last year, 24,090 children were enrolled in school. A key dimension of Nepal’s School Sector Development Program 2016-2023 is to ensure an education system that is inclusive and equitable in terms of access, participation and learning outcomes. This builds on the success of the previous decade, in which equitable access to school increased significantly. In 2006, girls were under-enrolling in primary school, which led to a gap in net enrollment of 3.8% between boys and girls. By 2016 the gender gap in primary net enrollment had closed to 1%.
While Nepal experienced significant success in the period leading up to 2016, the government identified remaining disparities that continue to limit the ability of some children to access quality education. It created the Consolidated Equity Strategy for the School Education Sector in Nepal, adopted in 2014, which now supports its policies and interventions. A core tool of the equity strategy is the equity index, which was designed to operationalize the equity strategy by measuring deprivation across districts. The equity index was launched in 2017.
Nepal’s equity index is an innovative tool designed to capture data related to disparities across the education sector. The equity index was developed by the Ministry of Education with support from UNICEF Headquarters, South Asia Regional Office and Nepal Country Office (through the Data Must Speak Initiative), the World Bank and GPE. It uses the disparity-based formula known as the Human Opportunity Index (HOI) and draws on both household and school-based censuses, capturing data on gender, geography, socio-economic status, ethnicity, caste and disability.
The index enables the Ministry of Education to use data to rank prevalence of disparities in education outcomes such as access, participation and learning outcomes. This allows for analysis and evidence-based planning against the drivers of disparities to ensure that public resources are allocated according to need in order to reduce these disparities. Local governments are then able to use both the additional resources that have been made available for districts recognized as having the highest disparities in education and other available resources in a more targeted manner.
The targeted interventions that were undertaken in 2017 as part of the regular enrollment cycle in the five districts that experience the highest disparities were done based on a household level census that verified the number of out-of-school children and their characteristics. These resulted in more children in school and learning! Although the equity index remains quite new, it is hoped that its success in the first five districts can be gradually replicated to improve school attendance and learning among children all over the country.
Primary wing of Adarsha Saula Yubak Higher Secondary School, Bhainsipati, Lalitpur, Nepal. CREDIT: GPE/NayanTara Gurung Kakshapati.
Encouragingly, Nepal expressed its commitment to scale up the budget toward education to up to 20% of the total national budget during the GPE Financing Conference, which took place February 1-2, 2018. Considering that in the last few years the budget allocated to the education sector was low, which negatively impacted the quality of education, this commitment represents a major step toward improving the country’s education system Together with the intervention from the World Bank, GPE and the Nepalese government, the future for the education sector looks promising!
Sources:
- https://www.worldatlas.com/as/np/where-is-nepal.html
- http://www.imnepal.com/interesting-facts-about-nepal-wonderful/
- https://www.globalpartnership.org/blog/nepals-equity-index-innovations-financing-reach-children-most-need
- https://www.globalpartnership.org/news-and-media/news/nepal-pledges-ramp-education-budget-gpe-financing-conference
