More than 300,000 young Nepali boys and girls appeared for their SLC exams this week. If trends in past years are any indication, less than a third of them will pass their exams.
Those who pass represent only 18 percent of the two million or so children from all over Nepal who entered primary school with them 10 years ago. In other words, between 80-90 percent of all children of school-going age in Nepal are either dropouts or have the 'failed' label pinned on them for life.
What could be a bigger waste? For all the money that has been spent on education, for the money poured in from donors over decades, we knew all along that the quality was not up to mark. But it is now clear that neither is the quantity. Experts warn that if something is not done fast about this crisis in education, Nepal's future in the next decades when today's Grade One children come up to SLC, will be far worse. Dropouts and joblessness will create social tensions that will make the present problems look like a picnic.
The government's own statistics show that 467,000 children every year 'disappear' between Grade Five and SLC. Where do they go? Most help out in the farm till they are teenagers and then migrate to the cities or to India to work so they can support their families. Many of them have nothing to read and no reason to write and soon lapse back into illiteracy.
What can be done to bring these half-a-million Nepali children who opt out of the formal school system every year into the fold? What can be done to keep them in school? What should be done to improve the quality and relevance of their education so they can be capable citizens that can contribute to their community and country?
One reason many have dropped out of the school system is because of the content of education. Nepal's school system is dominated by 'general education': an academic stream that prepares students for an antiquated exam system that declares nearly three-fourths of its students to be failures every year.
Now, the government with SDC and the Asian Development Bank are turning their attention to those who opt out of school by offering them technical and vocational education and training so they can learn and earn. Academic education rewards only the higher grades, allowing them to go on to become engineers, doctors and managers. Now, those who can't make the grades will have a chance to get skills training as plumbers, electricians, health workers, farm technicians and construction workers.
We need to decide which skills the country will require in the coming decades. How can school-age children who are now being cast by the wayside contribute to the nation's development? What kind of jobs are needed overseas so that Nepali workers can upgrade their skills and earn more than the pittance they are paid now?
At present there are hardly any opportunities for those who drop out of school before Grade 10 to find useful skills training. Even the few who go for skills or vocational training after SLC find their certificates are not recognised in the general education system.
The current 10th Plan has prioritised skills and technical training but it doesn't spell out how that is going to be achieved. The Plan announces an ambitious target of achieving 90 percent enrollment for primary classes, 45 for secondary but doesn't acknowledge the huge problem of retention of students till Grade 10 and just mentions in passing short-term professional training.
At present only 16 percent of school children between grades five and 10 who drop out get any form of skills training. Only three percent of those who finish Grade 10 go into vocational or technical training and of these, less than half get jobs on graduation. The reasons are not hard to find: training of low quality that doesn't meet requirements of the job market.
Nepal's vocational and technical training today is ad hoc, trial and error and arbitrary. No surprise there. Why should vocational and technical training be a shining example when the rest of the education sector is so badly run? If we had to look for a reason it would be that there is no long-term strategy on dropouts and the government gives it far less importance to vocational training than to the general education mainstream.
Countries need to look 15-20 years ahead and plan the kind of academic, professional and technical human resources they need. Then they tailor-make their education reflecting this strategy. If Nepal keeps on going in this patchwork mode with education then we are headed for certain disaster. At a time when we are a member of the WTO, to ignore human resource requirement is to push the country back a century.
Let's start thinking about what to do with the 82 percent of school children who never complete Grade 10. And let's start doing it now.
Excerpted from 'Quality Education for All' Special Supplement in Himal Khabarpatrika, 27 February-13 March.
Ready, steady 
Forever Crafts Industries in Khusibu has started skills training for women where they get paid for learning a trade. Once trained, the students easily find employment. Women involve other women in their family or community to knit caps and sweaters and can earn up to Rs 35,000 a month as a group. Anita Maharjan of Kathmandu and Bindeswari Shrestha of Sindhupalchok earn enough to run their household and educate their children.
Young adults who have never been to school or have dropped out are being trained to produce thangkas at the Janajati Welfare Centre in Swayambhu. Namgyal Bomjan says the 18 boys and girls he trained have all been employed in various thangka studios. While some earn up to Rs 5,000 a month, others have even become thangka supervisors. Purna Bahadur Lama of Kabhre, who escaped from the Maoists while in Grade Nine, now runs Popular Thangka Centre and is launching his own website to start exporting his products.
Nepal Buddha Thangka Art Gallery's Dawa Chhiri Sherpa is also a school dropout and has already sold Rs 80,000 worth of his own thangkas in Germany. Says Sherpa: "If it wasn't for the training, I would still be herding yaks in Dolakha."
