Bhaktapur, April 15
The government has launched the nationwide student’s enrollment campaign from Saturday. ‘Our collective desire: compulsory and free basic education’ is the theme of the campaign that kicked off in all seven provinces simultaneously.
The campaign aims to bring children remaining out of school to schools. Free distribution of textbooks is the part of the campaign as the government has allocated over Rs 2.2 billion to hand a full set of textbooks to students during the campaign.
As stated by Director General of Department of Education, Baburam Poudel, VIPs will join the campaign till the last week of April and door to door programmes will be organized thereafter for a week to find out if any student missed during the campaign.
Department deputy director Narhari Aryal said the effectiveness of the campaign has been stressed so as to increase the student enrollment rate from last year’s 97.2 percent to cent percent. The Department statistics show that 88,207 children belonging to the 5-9 years of age are still out of schools and 313,289 children of basic education level are out of schools.
The current net enrollment rate at the primary level is 97.2 percent while this is 92.3 percent for the basic level. This year, the government dreams to celebrate the 100 percent enrollment.
Until last year, the Ministry of Education, the Department of Education, District Education Office and non-governmental organizations working in the area of education had the participation in school enrollment campaign, but from this year, the government has sought the participation of provincial and local governments in the campaign.
Prime Minister KP Sharma will himself participate in the campaign as well. Likewise, there shall be the contribution of ministers, secretaries, joint-secretaries, officers, high political leadership, people’s representatives, artists, employees and local levels to make the campaign successful, it is said.
As stated by deputy director Aryal, Sarlahi, Dhanusha, Rautahat, Parsa, Bara, Kapilvastu, Morang, Sunsari, Rupandehi, Saptari, Siraha, Mohattari, and Banke are the districts where a maximum number of students of basic education level do not go schools.
