Halesi Tuwachung Municipality makes school education free

By Rajkumar Bhattarai,Khotang, Aug. 12: Halesi Tuwachung Municipality of Khotang district has made education up to the 12th standard free in all its community schools. The municipality made the schools free under its 'Zero Fee' campaign.

As per its Zero Fee Working Procedure 2022, the municipality has made its schools free. "If schools are found to be charging any fees under any pretext, they will be punished," Padam Bahadur Karki, coordinator of the municipality's Education Division, said.

Karki explained that the local level had announced the campaign last year and had managed the budget for it too. "We will now implement it fully," he said.

The Constitution of Nepal requires basic education to be free and mandatory and secondary education to be free. "But community schools were found to be charging fees under various headings," Halesi Tuwachung's Mayor Bimala Rai said. "We have implemented this campaign to ensure the constitutional right to free education."

Under the 'Zero Fee' campaign, the local level will provide schools with the money to conduct quarterly and half-yearly examinations. The municipality will itself take the annual exams for grades 4 to 9. It will also station teachers in various community schools under its jurisdiction.

However, students of grades 10, 11 and 12 will have to pay the registration fees as fixed by the Government of Nepal. "The students in these grades will have to pay Rs. 500 to Rs. 1,000 per year," Mankumar Rai, headmaster of Mahendraddhoya Secondary School, Halesi, said. "Other than that, the pupils will not have to pay a single penny."There are 89 community schools in the municipality.