Let’s Not Rob Children's Childhood

The Bill to Amend and Consolidate the School Education Laws has been pending in the House of Representatives since it was dissolved on September 9, 2025, following a nationwide movement spearheaded largely by Gen Z youths. Yet the urgency of reforming Nepal’s school education system predates this political disruption. Amendments to the School Education Act, 2080 (BS), are long overdue.

Education is an enabling right. It empowers individuals to claim, exercise, and safeguard other fundamental rights. When access to quality education is uneven, children are deprived of opportunities that could shape their life chances. Youth without a sound educational foundation cannot meaningfully contribute to their societies. Hence, failure in education policy inevitably translates into failure in social and economic development.

Over the years, Nepal has been producing two categories of citizens: one, educated in private, English-medium schools; two, in public schools, largely in the Nepali medium, with a few exceptions. These children grow up in starkly unequal learning environments until Grade 10. Yet they have to sit for the same examinations based on identical question papers. The outcome is predictable: private-school students overwhelmingly secure higher grades, while a large proportion of public-school students either fail or score significantly lower.

This structural disparity has far-reaching consequences. Students from public schools are often denied access to science and other competitive streams in private colleges offering foreign-affiliated degrees in marketable subjects. Many are forced either to discontinue their studies or to enroll in government colleges—institutions long plagued by poor academic standards and excessive politicization. This further undermines confidence and performance, resulting in limited career prospects and diminished social mobility.

If Nepal is serious about equality of opportunity, all schools must follow a common national curriculum. A fragmented curriculum institutionalizes inequality from the outset. When students are taught under fundamentally different pedagogical frameworks but assessed through the same national examinations, the system becomes punitive rather than merit-based.

Terminate SEE immediately

This contradiction is most evident in the Secondary Education Examination (SEE). If schools are allowed to follow different curricula, on what basis is a single national examination justified? A uniform examination logically presupposes a uniform curriculum. Without it, SEE merely formalizes disparity rather than measuring competence.

The Education Act defines school education as extending up to Grade 12. In this context, the continued centrality of SEE—an external, high-stakes examination conducted at Grade 10—is anomalous and illegal. If Grade 12 marks the completion of school education, the persistence of a terminal examination at Grade 10 reflects policy incoherence and administrative inertia.

The social consequences are deeply troubling. Over time, SEE has acquired disproportionate psychological weight. Failing or securing marginal pass marks often leads to dropouts, long-term stigma, and, in extreme cases, suicides among adolescents. Students who perform poorly are frequently denied admission to Grade 11, effectively terminating their educational trajectory before school education formally ends.

A comparison with other countries is instructive. Nordic countries such as Finland, Sweden, and Norway rely on continuous, school-based assessment and introduce national examinations only at the end of upper secondary education. Even India, which retains board examinations, is debating the relevance of Grade 10 boards and seeking to reduce their psychological burden under the National Education Policy 2020. Nepal’s insistence on SEE as a gatekeeping mechanism is irrelevant and impractical.

No education reform can succeed without improving teacher quality. At a minimum, school teachers should possess a Bachelor’s degree and meet a minimum age threshold of 20 years, ensuring both academic preparedness and emotional maturity. Teaching is not a stopgap job; it is a profession that shapes future citizens. Lower standards for recruitment only entrench mediocrity and weaken public trust in the system.

Curriculum design should not remain the exclusive preserve of bureaucrats and political appointees. Parents, as primary stakeholders, must be represented in the National Curriculum Council. Their lived experience offers insights into how policies affect classrooms and households. Equally important is the inclusion of civil society organizations working in education and child rights. They bring field-based knowledge, rights-based perspectives, and accountability mechanisms often absent from state-centric policymaking. A plural and participatory Council would enhance both legitimacy and effectiveness.

Let children be children

Equally alarming is the growing practice of enrolling children in formal schooling at two-and-a-half or three years of age. This is not early education; it is the premature institutionalization of childhood. In most countries, formal schooling begins much later—at seven in Finland, six in Germany and Norway, and six in Japan and South Korea.

The first five years of life are critical for play, emotional bonding, and social development. By confining toddlers to rigid academic environments—especially in private schools that operate as commercial enterprises—we are robbing children of their childhood. Long school hours, homework, early-morning bus rides, and late returns are neither pedagogically sound nor ethically defensible.

This exploitation is compounded by the normalization of school buses. Children should attend neighbourhood schools, not institutions located far from their homes. Schools should function as community institutions, accessible on foot and embedded in local life. Prohibiting school bus operations would restore children’s daily routines, reduce pollution and traffic congestion, ease trade deficit, and save parents’ substantial financial resources. More importantly, it would allow children to grow within familiar social environments—an essential but neglected dimension of holistic education.

Taken together—curriculum uniformity, the abolition or reform of SEE, higher teacher standards, participatory governance, delayed formal schooling, and neighbourhood-based education—these reforms point toward a single goal: a child-centred, equitable, and humane education system. Nepal does not lack examples or evidence. What it lacks is the political resolve to align its education system with domestic law, international best practices, and basic human decency.

(Sedhai is a freelance writer.)