Ministry of Education Nepal (MoE) has started discussion on technical and vocational education in higher secondary level.
MoE is currently providing technical and vocational education to students of Grade X in 99 schools across the country as part of the pilot project in school level.
Similarly, the Council for Technical Education and Vocational Training has also been running technical and vocational education at various levels in different parts of the country.
At present, school education refers to education from Grade I to X while Grade XI and XII are higher education.
However, the School Sector Reform Plan, a government plan to reform education sector, has divided school education into two parts: basic education and secondary education. After implementation of SSRP, by amending the existing Education Act, Grade XI and XII will also be considered school education.
The SSRP has also envisioned technical and vocational stream in addition to general stream in secondary education.
Hari Lamsal, Spokesperson, MoE, said, “There is no clear provision of merging Council for Technical Education and Vocational Training’s technical and vocational course with school education in SSRP, so we have started discussing the issue.” He added that the Council for Technical Education and Vocational Training , which has been catering technical and vocational education at various levels, has both infrastructure and educational programmes while the government has committed to providing technical and vocational education from school level but does not have the required infrastructure.
The government has committed to establishing one polytechnic institute in each constituency this year while the CTEVT already has 73 annex schools in different parts of the country. The CTEVT had also organised a two-day workshop to bring harmony in the technical and vocational education provided by various ministries.
As many as 12 ministries have been providing various technical, vocational and skilled training to the youths for employment, but lack of coordination and harmony in curriculum has resulted in repetition in courses and misuse of budgets.
