Rethinking Education in Nepal

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 1. Background

Over the last half decade major progresses and breakthroughs have taken place in the
global education ecosystem. However, Nepal has been restricted in delivering an
education format that has seen little progress and innovation. ’Gold standards’ that were
true in the 19 and 20 century around rote learning are being followed in most schools
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in Nepal. Our school system has lagged behind in the path of progress that has
happened with the advent of modern technology and the need for our students to
explore higher levels of cognitive thinking. As internet and smartphones become
ubiquitous there is an urgent need to reinvent the way we facilitate knowledge sharing
and building community connections, and making real-life sense of what education
should mean to a 21 century teacher and student.
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As government and international organizations focus mostly on uplifting and supporting

the community schools in Nepal, the private schools have been more or less left to their
own devices which has also in turn made some private schools leaders in their field,
setting international standards in pedagogy and innovation in teachings. However,
Schools cannot work in isolation. If they are to truly integrate the learning of diverse
communities and the world, and infuse students with skills that will take precedence in
the future, our curriculum and teaching needs to be broadened and made more
inclusive. This is the vision that many educators have been carrying. But it takes a bold
step to come together and make an effort to create something meaningful and
revolutionary in the context of the education ecosystem. That is what “Rethinking
Education in Nepal Alliance” (RENA) is geared to do. A group of passionate educators
from these example setting progressive leading schools of Nepal and specialist
organizations that were acting as agents of social and intellectual change in the
education sector has come together to think of structured ways in developing a
framework that will build upon the current education and be forward-thinking and
progressive.

It began with the motive of imparting an inclusive view of society and the world, beyond
the limits of a text or a classroom. It seeks to empower teachers, students, and schools
to truly emerge as centers of holistic learning and growth imparting crucial social,
cognitive, behavioral, analytical skills that will foster a generation of students that are
ready to tackle challenges of the present and the future, with a deep understanding of
the past. Every alliance that desires to bring forth changes in “status quo” needs to
concretize thoughts regarding innovation and experimentation into a change-
management framework that is objective-and-outcome oriented with specific goals that
are time-bound, measurable, and achievable. RENA therefore has evolved from a
loosely organized "Discussion Group" to a concrete group of education leaders and
organizations with varied skills and expertise across multiple sectors that is wanting to
create an evolution in the education ecosystem in Nepal.

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2. Objective

The overarching vision of this group is to create a meaningful, long-term and sustaining
change in how we educate our children in Nepal. The outcome of this Alliance is to
engage key stakeholders (government agencies, and schools, teachers, students and
their parents) in the education sector and specialist agencies that are keen to contribute
to building a robust and progressive education system in Nepal through concrete
projects and continuous advocacy and discourse at institutional, local and national level
engaging government, non-government and private sectors 

 
 3. Intervention Actions

To set the ball in motion, the Alliance plans to embark on its first project by developing a
new curriculum based on the Government structure and curriculum framework, that is
cutting edge, interdisciplinary, and adaptive. The curriculum will inculcate lessons learnt
(see Annexure) by the educational institutions on progressive education and value
addition of child-centered educational practices, and including resources, experiences,
and skills that individual specialist organizations bring to the table. 

Currently there is renewed interest and hope in the new, integrated curriculum
framework proposed by the Curriculum Development Center (CDC), alongside a great
deal of uncertainty about its implementation.  The framework also makes a provision for
an innovative curriculum ear-marked as “Local Curriculum” for Grade 1 to 8, which will
be the subject that RENA will be developing. RENA believes that this provides good
opportunity for localization of various pertinent contents like STEAM (Science,
Technology, Engineering and Mathematics), Culture, Music, Environment, SEL (Social,
Emotional Learning), Nutrition and Health, to name a few while keeping the global
perspectives. Local Curriculum is envisioned as one subject curriculum that gives
priority to local areas’ needs, aspirations and local participation in its development and
implementation, independent (yet correlated to the national curriculum) to address the
country’s geographical, health and environmental, social and cultural diversity and its
subsequent gaps, challenges and opportunities. 

Wildlife Conservation Nepal (WCN), a founding member of RENA has had an extensive
experience in designing, developing and implementing local curriculum in more than
500 schools across the country for more than 10 municipalities. WCN has also
collaborated with the Curriculum Development Center to develop the national
Framework for Local Curriculum for all nepali schools in 2013. With all this experience
WCN will be leading the process for building this new curriculum format for the Alliance-
highlighting everyone's strengths, capitalizing on the members experience and building
capacities of the members on curricula designing and implementing.

i. Building of a new curriculum for Grades 1 to 8

The National Curriculum Framework that is being used by the majority of schools
around the country is based on pedagogy that is outdated and not at all engaging for
students. This is where RENA or the Alliance steps in and hopes to make a difference
by curating content that will ensure inclusion of experiences, stories, facets from the
local community. The aim of this Alliance is to develop a new local curriculum that will

RETHINKING EDUCATION IN NEPAL. 2

take aspects of the communities where the schools are operating in, and make a
progressive, highly modular, and adaptive framework that can respond to the changes
in the environment and society. The need of the hour is to be adaptive and allow events,
local or national/regional narratives, to be a part of the learning environment.

Education in the 21 century needs to factor in life skills and one of the ways to do that
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is to be open to the community and region around us. Subjects cannot be taught in
vacuum and learning outcomes can be co-designed with teachers and learners that are
residents in the community. The Alliance hopes to achieve such an open framework for
a local curriculum through inclusion of local expertise that is guided by a national
curriculum framework guideline. The idea is to present the local governments across the
country with a blueprint of a local curriculum that is not only progressive but
incorporates inputs of different specialist organizations working in specialized and niche
areas of education. A few examples of such are Environment, Gender Empowerment,
Robotics, STEAM, Arts, Music, Cultural heritage, Emotional Well-being. This structure
will also create an adaptive space within the blueprint that will allow schools to choose
components and sectors that they would want to work with and on, depending on school
vision and resources.

ii. Making the new curriculum accessible to the rest of the country

For the largest time in our country’s education history stories of innovation have been
centered around the capital city of Kathmandu. Although the government has been
proactive in ensuring that community schools are not left behind in terms of teacher
training and resources, the majority of these schools still struggle with both access to
quality and progressive teaching content and experience for progressive education. The
new framework also mandates all schools to implement a local curriculum guided by the
education department of municipalities. However, these newly formed departments are
ill equipped to design such a curriculum so most of them do not know what to do.

In this scenario, the Alliance aims to design and develop an adaptable local curriculum
framework – following the national curriculum guidelines and implement it in a closed,
lab-based framework at member schools as a pilot. Only after the prototyping and
testing phase is over, will this framework be made accessible to schools around the
country in consultation with local governments and individual schools- in collaboration
with central and local governments. The member schools will actually invest resources
and time to test it in their schools with the help of the specialist organizations. This will
be the first ever attempt to do so and thus can be considered a doable but a ambitious
attempt.

 4. Way Forward - a peek into future course of action 

As we move forward in our vision of rethinking design and delivery of education, there is
a need for some clarity in the journey forward and the collaboration pathways. The
Alliance has come together to explore common paths guided by an umbrella vision - to
rethink education and to explore ways of influencing education/curriculum for the current
generation of school-going students to ensure they have access to a robust and cross
cutting curriculum driven by local context and learnings. We are driven with the belief
that if we are to teach the current generation using the same pedagogy of rote learning
that the earlier generation was subjected to, it would constitute a great disservice to the

RETHINKING EDUCATION IN NEPAL. 3

children of today. The way forward is to institutionalize capacities and strengths across
sectors and look for a strategy to bring the same into an implementable framework for
schools. If we can influence the way schools think about teaching-learning, we will have
achieved something truly path-breaking. 

The Alliance plans to continue discourse on fostering innovation in education and

engage with agencies – government and private – and individual educators around the
country and the region to ensure that the discourse around rethinking education
becomes more inclusive and more enabling. There is an urgent need to introduce newer
learning into our education framework that compiles experiences and learning from
around the nation and from the region. The Alliance and its members will continue to
meet periodically, as it has since the 31 of May, 2020. It will strive to expand the
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network and include more decision makers, innovators, policy makers, and public
officials to induce critical analysis of the framework and ensure relevance of the same to
the context of 21 century learning in Nepal and perhaps even become a legitimate,
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independent and a reliable “Think Tank” for the education sector in Nepal sooner than
later.  

5.     Collaboration Pathways for intervention action points

An important point of clarity is ownership of collaboration is very essential. We are

building this movement for the greater good of the education system so that resources
developed through the alliance will be best utilized by any educational institutions in the
country. The developed curriculum will be based on special expertise of ten specialist
organizations along with the experience and learnings of ten leading schools of Nepal
who are members of the Alliance. The organizations in alliance hold unparalleled
expertise in areas such as Environment, Gender Empowerment, Robotics, STEAM,
Arts, Music, Cultural Heritage, Health-Nutrition, and Emotional well-being in Nepal. The
sole purpose of the undertaking would be that the curriculum of this nature must not be
limited to a few since the impact of this has to be felt across the ecosystem. The caveat
is that it (the curriculum) will be tested in an experimental format within a closed
community of alliance member schools for the pilot phase. The member schools have in
fact created a basket fund (of NRs. 2K) for the development of the Local Curriculum.
Once it is tested and modeled well, it will be an open and free resource. In this, Wildlife
Conservation Nepal (member of the alliance) which has more than a decade of
experience in formulating local level curriculum with the Government and implementing
the same in different municipalities through a variety of partnership models will be
facilitating the development of the local curriculum and making it accessible throughout
country through its network of schools and teachers.

 Current Members of the alliance are (in alphabetical order) :

A. Specialist Organizations
1. Dulwa Expeditions Pvt. Ltd. 
2. Kathalaya Inc.
3. My Emotions Matter
4. Project Sarangi Center Pvt. Ltd.  
5. Robotics Association of Nepal

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 6. Semantic Creation 
7. Ujyalo Foundation 
8. Wildlife Conservation Nepal
9. Youth Thinkers Society

 B. Educational Institutions

1. Ace School 
2. Aksharaa School
3. Alok Vidyashram 
4. Brihaspati Vidyasadan 
5. Creative Academy
6. Euro School 
7. Malpi International School
8. Nisarga Batika School
9. Sanskriti International School
10. Shristi School 
11. Takshashila Education Foundation 
12. Triyog High School

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