Nepal-03: Becoming a Teacher

Nepal is one of the poorest countries in Asia. The population is about 30 million and total average age is 22 years. That means the number of children has been rapidly increasing over decades. The more children are there, the more education becomes competitive. In fact, there are so many schools including private ones in Nepal especially around major cities. Therefore, the school attendance ratio of children is not as low as before. But there is a huge gap between government schools and private schools in the quality of education. Environment of government schools is much worse than private’s, but there is no choice for poor families besides putting their children into free government schools.

According to the only male teacher of the school, the root of all problems with government schools is that government doesn't manage them properly, such as insufficient number of teachers. Government must put enough teachers in each public school in our common sense, but Nepali government isn't fulfilling the needs. For example, there were five teachers in Shukla Gandaki Primary School, but only two of them were permanent teachers who are paid by government. The other teachers were temporary hired villagers, and the village must pay their salary, so some schools have not even a teacher for each class. Also temporary teacher’s salary is less than half of permanent teachers’ average, yet it’s not easy to collect money for villagers. What’s more, the permanent teachers are not really skilled and motivated. In fact, the male teacher was also a temporary teacher though, his English was much better than permanent teachers.

Another considerable difference between government schools and private schools is English education. Basically government schools use textbooks published by government that are written in Nepali, but private schools use private publishers’ textbooks that are written in English. Therefore private schools’ students have far better English skill than government schools’ students. And since Nepal is under-developing country, English skill is very important to have better jobs. That’s why parents who care of education put their children into a private school if they can afford to. Then as a result, most of government schools’ students are from poor families, and they’ll never be able to match private schools’ students. The circumstance of government schools in Nepal that The male teacher told me was much worse than I expected. This is the reality of under developing countries.

And when the male teacher and I were talking, one old man came to us. He was the chairman of “School Management Committee” of this village. The chairman didn't speak English, so the male teacher translated what he was saying. He asked me how long I was going to stay in Nepal, and I answered that I had no plan at the moment. And then, he suddenly asked me to volunteer in this school. I was surprised and told him that I had never taught at school before. Actually I was interested in teaching at school, but I thought teachers must be trained, besides this school was government school. But he said it doesn't matter in Nepal, and those temporary teachers hadn't been trained either. It seemed the management of a government schools was not as strict as I thought. Then, there was no reason to decline. I decided to volunteer at this school for a while, to see what I can do. This is how I started teaching in Nepal.

The sun was sinking and it was time to return to Pokhara. Japanese students were waving to the children in farewell, some were even crying. It must have been unforgettable memory for them all. They were going to leave Nepal soon, but my life in Nepal was just about to begin.