Source: Agenzia Fides – MIL OSI
St Xavier School, Nepal
Kathmandu (Agenzia Fides) – Nepal’s new education law, currently being approved, has sparked intense public debate and protests by teachers. The Nepal Teachers’ Federation has threatened to launch a fresh protest if the School Education Bill is not endorsed within a week. The bill, with 163 sections, had received more than 1,700 amendments. It took one and a half months of rigorous discussions for the panel to reach a conclusion. However, the federation has said the revised version is more regressive than the original bill that was registered in Parliament in September 2023.The Minister of Education has stated that the government has allocated 211 billion rupees to the education sector for next year and plans to include private schools under state regulation. Teachers are demanding fair wages, job security, and better working conditions, with one priority objective: guaranteeing the right to education for all children. Despite the Nepalese Constitution recognizes this right, problems such as poverty, social exclusion, gender discrimination, outdated teaching methods, and inadequate infrastructure persist. “Despite the progress made, challenges such as poverty, social exclusion, and gender bias continue to compromise children’s access to education,” Father Pius Perumana, a priest of the Apostolic Vicariate of Nepal, the ecclesiastical district that covers the entire country, told Fides. “One of the issues at stake,” he notes, “is the effort to ensure that private schools are exclusively profit-oriented, which, in my opinion, is a good measure. The main problem in Nepal is how to make the right to education accessible to children even in the most remote corners of the country,” he emphasizes. Nepal is home to 11.5 million children out of a population of 33 million, and nearly one million are orphans. Children aged 0 to 14 represent 39% of the population, with 3.5 million of them being of school age (8-12 years). The 2015 Constitution guarantees free and compulsory education up to the primary level (grades 1-8) and free education up to the secondary level (grades 9-12). This right has been strengthened by the Free and Compulsory Education Act, which includes marginalized groups such as Dalit children and children with disabilities. According to the Statistical Yearbook of the Catholic Church (data as of December 31, 2023), the Apostolic Vicariate of Nepal, which has a community of 8,000 Catholics, operates, with the support of religious orders, 24 kindergartens (1,300 children), 29 primary schools (more than 13,000 students), and 25 secondary schools with 25,000 students of different ethnicities and religions, actively contributing to the right to education in the country. (PA) (Agenzia Fides, 7/72025)
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