Disconnect and capture of education decentralisation reforms in Nepal: implications for community involvement in schooling

Abstract

This article argues that processes of disconnect and capture have affected Nepal's efforts to decentralise its education system, leading to a failure to engage the very stakeholders – parents and communities – that the reforms sought to reach. Specifically, disconnect occurred in the development and implementation of the latest ‘decentralisation’ reforms because they were formulated via a highly centralised policy-making process and then implemented from the top down. As a result, they had little impact on community-level school leadership or ownership, and led to a continued exclusion of the very community-level stakeholders that the reforms sought to engage. Furthermore, the policy reforms have also led to an increased central legitimisation and empowerment of school management committees, which in turn has facilitated the capture and politicisation of these bodies by locally established leaders who are often not motivated to engage parents and community members in school reform. While these processes are not necessarily new phenomena to Nepal, they illustrate the extent to which globalised policy agendas have been ineffective in engaging community-level stakeholders.

Keywords:

• decentralisation
• community schooling
• Nepal

Notes

1. Field data were collected in and around school communities in Kaski and Bhaktapur Districts. It included participant observation of schools in operation and interviews with policy stakeholders at the central, district and community levels. Those interviewed included government staff at the central and district levels, Resource Center heads, local non-governmental organisations’ administrative and field workers, teacher's union leaders, headmasters, teachers, School Management Committee chairs and members, Parent–Teacher Association members, and community members such as the parents and guardians of children in community-managed schools.

2. Excerpted from World Bank Press Release No. 2003/456/SAR: ‘Nepal: World Bank approves credit for Community School Support Project’, 30 June 2003.

3. In addition to District Education Committees, a parameter for village-level school oversight via Village Education Committees (VECs) was also established to relate to the newly established local bodies of the Local Self-Governance Act as described above. However, because of domestic disruption due to the Maoist insurgency, elections were not held between the time this act was implemented and the recent election of 2008 – and thus, these VECs have been technically non-existent.

4. For more details regarding the responsibilities of the School Management Committees, see Section 12 of the Education Act, Seventh Amendment.

5. See Education Act, Seventh Amendment, Section 12a.

6. See Education Rules, Section 190A (inserted via the First Amendment in 2003).

7. The Department of Education (DOE) is a central-level independent department within the Ministry of Education and Sports. It is responsible primarily for the development of primary, lower secondary and secondary schooling within the country, and thus, the District Education Offices report to the DOE on these matters. However, policy-making associated with these areas is usually handled at the Ministry administration level. (For related organisation charts see Bista and Carney 2004.)

8. See Education Rules, Section 190A (inserted via the First Amendment in 2003).

9. See Education Rules, Chapter 17, Section 93 for details.

10. See Operational Manual for Community Managed Schools, Chapter 1, Section 1(2).

11. See Operational Manual for Community Managed Schools, Chapter 1, Section 2(b).

12. See Operational Manual for Community Managed Schools, Chapter 2, Section 3(4).

13. See Operational Manual for Community Managed Schools, Chapter 7.

14. In the last several years, due to an extended period of political instability, the infrastructures in place for gathering and overseeing educational data have been challenged. Thus, this article does not aim to provide an accurate statistic in this area, but rather to provide a broad sense of the status of community-managed schools relative to their community school counterparts.

15. Dalit is the term used to refer to members of the population who were traditionally members of the lowest castes.

16. See Operational Manual for Community Managed Schools, Chapter 3, Section 4(1).

17. See the Community School Support Project Working System Guidelines: Part One, Section 4.2 (d), and the associated Accounting Guidelines, Section 1.

18. The total adult literacy rate as cited by UNICEF on its website was 57% in 2007.

19. The reason the DEO might specifically invite community leaders is twofold. First, given the transitory nature of the DEO position (Bista and Carney 2004), he only spends a short time within a single district, and thus, is most likely to have made the acquaintance of these local-level leaders. Second, if he wishes the reform ‘message’ to get to someone who is positioned to understand and follow up on it, he must also contact people in leadership positions who are capable of disseminating information within their communities.

20. The Panchayat period in Nepal lasted from approximately 1962 to 1991.

21. The ‘UML’ refers to the CPN-UML or Communist Party of Nepal–United Marxist Leninist party.