Kathmandu, Sept 10: The House of Representatives, the lower house of the Federal Parliament, has today unanimously accepted the proposal seeking consideration on the Bill to Amend Some Nepal Acts Related to Education, 2076 BS.
Minister for Education, Science and Technology, Giriraj Mani Pokharel had tabled the proposal along with the message on the bill received from the National Assembly, in the meeting of the House of Representatives, earlier to this.
Lawmakers taking part in the discussions on the principles of the bill said that open discussions should be held regarding the structure of the country's education in the context of education and culture coming under attack, that education should be made compulsory and not only free, and ensuring the women's participation at the decision making level in the education bodies.
They also stressed on the need of improving the quality of education in the country in the context of 62,000 Nepali students going to foreign universities for higher education, making appointments of appropriate persons to the top posts in universities on the basis of merit and not on the basis of political quota, making an umbrella law to govern and regulate the universities, making the basic level education free and compulsory, ensuring the proportional representation from all communities while making appointments to the high posts in universities and education-related government bodies and making provisions so that the vice-chancellor of universities is elected from among the professors by the professors themselves rather than the government picking up the vice chancellor, and increasing access of all the communities to education.
Lawmakers Khagaraj Adhikari, Pushpa Bhusal, Gagan Kumar Thapa, Teju Lal Chaudhary, Sher Bahadur Tamang, Prem Suwal and Rekha Kumari took part in the discussions.
Responding to issues raised by the lawmakers in course of the discussions, Education Minister Pokharel said preparations were bring made to bring an umbrella Act on higher education or education. He expressed commitment to correcting the appointments to the university top posts, saying all the political parties were agreed that mistakes had been made to that regard during the transition period. (RSS)