Wednesday, October 03, 2007

Schools

I am trying to become a little more familiar with the school system in Nepal so I can help a little more effectively. There are 4 types of schools.


  1. Government schools with enormous class sizes (up to 105) where you must pay bribes to get things you need.

  2. Community schools that are managed by the community and the government provides some funding. Generally, they are underfunded and do not have any trained teachers.

  3. There are NGO schools which are quite similar to the community schools and suffer from the same problems.

  4. Private schools which are not much better than the others but are much more expensive.

I was at the private school below last week...half the teachers were absent and none of the teachers were trained. Yesterday, I was at a community school that was in a half built house. There was no glass in the windows and the roof was not completed. It gets too cold in winter, so they bring the kids to the roof for one hour of sun to warm up.

I am really having difficulty with all of these projects because in most of the cases there are people profiting from the schools...sometimes when they profess to be working to help the children. I do not know what to do for them.

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