Nepal School System Left Shattered in Aftermath of Quake - NYTimes.

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5/21/15, 8:03 PM

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ASIA PACIFIC

Nepal School System Left Shattered in Aftermath of

Quake
By GARDINER HARRIS

MAY 13, 2015

CHAUTARA, Nepal The concrete walls of the high school here shattered like a
mirror, leaving a latticework of fissures that crisscross every wall and pillar.
Engineers have condemned the school, Shree Gyan Mandir Mamuna Higher
Secondary School, fearing that the continuing aftershocks from the devastating
earthquake last month could cause at least one of the structures two floors to
collapse. That is what happened to the house next door, where the second floor is
now the first.
While information is still sketchy about the extent of the damage across Nepal,
officials say that thousands of schools have been destroyed and that tens of
thousands of classrooms need to be replaced.
Almost one million children who were enrolled in school before the
earthquake could now find they have no school building to return to, said Tomoo
Hozumi, Unicefs representative in Nepal. Prolonged interruption to education
can be devastating for childrens development and future prospects.
While the government hopes to finish constructing 7,000 temporary learning
centers made from tents and bamboo this week, officials say they cannot hope to
replace all of the damaged schools in time.
Officials do not plan to reopen schools before May 29. We hope this will
create a school environment where students will get to reunite and share personal
experiences in a post-quake scenario. It will help us overcome the disaster, said
Khagendra Prasad Nepal, an Education Department spokesman.
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Nepal School System Left Shattered in Aftermath of Quake - NYTimes.com

5/21/15, 8:03 PM

More than 5,000 schools were damaged in the April 25 earthquake, and as
many as 1,000 schools collapsed in a quake on Tuesday.
Aftershocks have continued to rattle Nepalis, including the 7.3 magnitude
earthquake that killed at least 65 people on Tuesday.
Here in Chautara, local officials continue to use the high school for storing and
distributing relief supplies. Last week, a line of at least 150 people snaked around
the schoolyard, and the schools deputy principal repeatedly ducked into a
damaged classroom to retrieve giant bags of rice.
But officials say they will not allow the schools roughly 350 students back into
the building when classes restart on Sunday after a three-week national holiday in
the wake of the disastrous 7.8 magnitude earthquake that destroyed some 90
percent of the buildings in this impoverished mountain district and killed more
than 8,000 people across Nepal. Where classes will restart has yet to be decided,
officials said.
We cant decide what to do, said Krishna Prasad Dangal, the schools
economics teacher. The government is going to have to make a decision.
Childrens advocates fear the earthquake could reverse decades of steady
progress in primary school attendance, which stood at 95 percent just before the
earthquake, up from 64 percent in 1990.
Schools in Nepal were woefully inadequate even before the quake, and the
countrys literacy rate of about 66 percent is among the lowest in Asia. Teachers
often fail to show up for school, and families often decide that schooling is not
worth the loss of labor around the farm, especially since many of the farms in
Nepal are on steep slopes that require constant tending.
Nepals dropout rate is high. About 1.2 million children between the ages of 5
and 16 were dropping out or never attended school even before the quake,
according to Unicef.
High teacher absenteeism is widely seen as endemic in rural schools, and
corporal punishment is routinely administered.
With so much work to be done in reconstructing villages and rebuilding
damaged schools, childrens advocates fear many children will never return to
school.

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Nepal School System Left Shattered in Aftermath of Quake - NYTimes.com

5/21/15, 8:03 PM

Even schools that are still standing have in many cases been taken over by
homeless people who will be hard to dislodge in the coming week because tents
have been slow to arrive in the most seriously affected districts and the monsoon
season is due to start within about five weeks.
It will take at least three years to overcome the earthquakes damage and run
classes in permanent structures, Mr. Nepal of the Education Department said.
The disaster would have been far worse if the earthquake had struck any day
besides Saturday, the only day schools and offices in Nepal are almost universally
closed. Some 31 teachers, including one at Shree Gyan Mandir Mamuna, and 200
students died in the quake across Nepal, according to Mr. Nepal.
In Chautara, children were playing on the one corner of the playground left to
them, where a rusting metal slide gave respite from the unrelenting agony of the
past weeks.
Watching the children play, Gopal Dangal, an elected representative from the
district, said that even more than instructional materials, the children from
Chautara needed ways to play so they could somehow forget the lives and property
lost in repeated temblors that have shaken their confidence in the world.
Tell them we need balls, toys and other things for these kids, he said. Just
tell them that, will you?
Bhadra Sharma contributed reporting from Kathmandu, Nepal.
A version of this article appears in print on May 15, 2015, on page A4 of the New York edition with the headline:
Nepals School System Is Shattered by Quakes.

2015 The New York Times Company

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