UNESCO organized a two-day validation workshop in collaboration with the Ministry of Education, Science, and Technology of Nepal to finalize a local education planning comprehensive resource book. This will help the 314 municipalities of Nepal to support one another in their endeavors to create plans in education based on local needs, ensuring inclusive, transformative, and sustainable education systems.
About thirty stakeholders, including policymakers, educational experts, development partners, and government representatives, were brought together by the workshop to brainstorm and harmonize the resource book. Deepak Sharma, Director General of the Center for Education and Human Resource Development at MoEST, emphasized the fact that the resource book would guide local areas into fulfilling their education plans. He further said that this new resource is much more sophisticated compared to the current planning guidelines the government has been providing them.
Joint Secretary Baikuntha Aryal underlines the need for resources that can support decentralized local education planning while upholding the spirit of education decentralization in Nepal post-federalization. Here, the quest to have localized education plans from local government units calls for UNESCO’s support to make them locally responsive yet not at variance with the international commitments the country has made. This resource book is intended to ensure equipping of local governments with all the tools required in facing diverse needs of education at the population levels, particularly the marginalized groups, women, and youth.
Am Gagnon, a senior programme specialist at UNESCO’s International Institute for Educational Planning (IIEP), echoed a need for cooperation and coordination among the three key partners: UNESCO, Government of Nepal, and IIEP. Considering that the planning with localized and responsive education plan has begun with an orientation session held in December 2022, ensuring that the education needs would be given priority by local and provincial governments in these areas-mentioned above.
In fact, as part of this initiative, already seven municipalities of all the seven provinces of Nepal have developed their education plans; there are some municipalities that are already in the planning process. To fill the gap between the local educational needs and national policy, support from UNESCO and IIEP has been quite instrumental for local leaders to anchor education plans on indigenous knowledge.
The Chief of Education at UNESCO, Dhruba Raj Regmi, avers that one resource book be developed and subsequently used for the developing of local educational frameworks. The final version of the resource book will then play a very important role for provincial governments in pursuing education strategies equitable and forward-looking, which directly contribute to a better future for education for all Nepalese.”
This reflects UNESCO’s efforts in promoting cooperation with MoEST and local governments to achieve the goal of educating each community equitably within the nation of Nepal.
