Liite. Draft Proposal Background:

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1 Liite Draft Proposal Initiating a pilot programme in select schools of Nepal to address school drop out and make the TEVT (soft skills) component of SSRP relevant and effective Background: The School Sector Reform Plan (SSRP, ) of The Ministry of Education (MOE) in Nepal has planned to introduce vocational stream of secondary education and also to incorporate the TEVT-Soft (Soft Skills) as orientation into the general education curriculum. The objective is to enhance the quality and relevance of education so that it can improve employability of students and meet the demands of world of work. The Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Finland, through its bilateral programme in Nepal, is planning to support a pilot on TEVT-Soft both at basic and secondary levels in 100 select schools of Nepal from 2013/2014 academic year. Realization that many students are left to choose vocational stream without any prior knowledge about what is vocational education, MOE through its comprehensive SSR Plan included orientation on vocational studies, which is now called as soft-skills, beginning from grade six through eight. The major driving force behind the concept of soft skills was to enhancing the quality and relevance of vocational and technical education through preparation and orientation to students quite early on. Secondly, and most importantly, the idea was also to impart civic sense and values so as to enable students to understand and pursue civic responsibilities. Thus, the intent of SSRP is mainly two-fold: 1) to orienting students about technical and vocational education early on so that at the end of grade eight they could chose the right track as well as the right trade for their occupational career, and 2) to educate soft skills among students so that they develop respect and appreciate the world of work, human values and self-respect. Challenges: Introducing soft skills in school education is not as easy as it may sound. The first difficulty is associated with preparing appropriate curriculum to introduce soft skills. Since soft skills are mostly an elusive concept, it is quite difficult, if not impossible, to define and standardize it so that it can be implemented as a general subject to all students regardless of their own value system. Moreover, it is also debatable whether soft skills can be introduced as a separate subject or its concepts be assimilated in existing subject. Preparing teachers is another hurdle in this effort. Prior to teacher preparation, there is a need to clarify whether soft skills are better educated through pedagogy in school or better if provided as a training package? These clarification leads to determine whether to produce a teacher or a trainer for soft skills. Assessment of soft skills level among students is another challenge. Soft skills are least measurable. It has to be seen in student s behavior in the society and in the work places. Moreover, it does not guarantee that one could perform the way s/he was taught.

2 Therefore, evaluation and certification of soft skills do not ensure one s behavior in the workplace or in the society. Opportunities: The SSRP has significantly focused on skills oriented education through both regular and TEVT programs in the country. Increasing foreign and in-country workforce demand has also demonstrated the need of skilled and competent individuals. Revision of national curriculum framework, the TEVT policy, and even the current program and budget has rendered significant emphasis to skills oriented education. Moreover, there are several projects such as government managed Skills for Employment Project, EVENT; and a number of I/NGO managed projects are already working in the field of skills based education in Nepal. These efforts have paved the way to making headways for a more systematic and results oriented skills education in the country. The global trends have also become more favorable to Nepali workforce and the opportunities for employment in the region are almost endless. Some ground work have already begun in the direction of skills based education. Reform in national curriculum framework, and policies and approach papers has been already developed. The MOE and its development partners have shown their commitments to strengthening the TEVT sector. Therefore, it is the right time to maximize the discourse on education with a focus on skills based and employable education. What we already know is that the world of work is increasingly becoming competitive, global, and technology driven. Thus, it has become a necessity for both the individuals as well as the organizations to demonstrate certain level of performance in both soft and hard skills areas in order to sustain. In other words, we can assert that soft skill is a must to all in both regular as well as TEVT education. By realizing all this, the MOE has pledged to pilot TEVT-Soft in 100 schools starting from this academic session. The pre-requisite, therefore, for the above pilot to succeed and get mainstreamed into the SSRP of Nepal is that children continue to be in school at least up to the basic level and preferably up to secondary school. Statistics however suggest otherwise. The overall survival rate to grade eight in Nepal is 67.5%, with 66.2% for boys and 69.5% for girls (MOE, 2012). One of the estimates from USIS shows that the survival rate up to grade 5 is 79% and completion rate of the primary education cycle is 55% (USIS, 2008), needless to say that it gets progressively worse in grades 9,10 and beyond. The above data clearly suggests that for many children primary level is the terminal education and soon they are either forced to work in the field or start looking for paid jobs. Given this scenario, if TEVT-Soft has to achieve its well-meaning objective, it becomes critically important to look for the background to the reasons of the children's school dropout and find ways to address the problem. Moreover, it is widely recognized that in the absence of good quality basic education, TEVT might not be able to help adequately unleash the potential of individuals ultimately improving their human capital value and employability prospects. There is an apparent need for additional measures to tackle the root causes of the dropout problem at primary, pre secondary and secondary levels. The dropout phenomenon occurs at secondary level in particular, although children - mostly girls - start dropping out already at the primary level. Furthermore, a large proportion of

3 children are left outside formal schooling for a variety of reasons. In order to reduce the dropout rate and to improve the enrolment rate of certain excluded groups special complementary measures are needed. The ultimate objective is to ensure access of more children to formal schooling and to keep them in school after the primary level. Based on experience from the field the bulk of children who drop out from school are the ones who fail to pass their respective grades; those who have to go out in search of work especially orphan children; children from female headed households, children with chronically ill or disabled parents and who are abandoned by their parents / caregivers. In addition, some children just succumb to a larger trend in the community level of dropping out at an early age and starting to work. This trend is also very often reinforced by strong pull factors. Another group of children, who unfortunately never attend school, are disabled children. It is important to note that in their case often the children are actually suffering from a minor impairment. With well targeted effort they could easily be made part of mainstream education. An interesting phenomen is also that at the lower secondary and secondary school level the dropout rate for boys is higher than girls. The present understanding of the ground reality points out to following key reasons for dropping out, especially in lower secondary and secondary school: lack of adequate and encouraging environment for learning in schools. disconnection between teachers and parents which gets perpetuated because of lack of participation and involvement of parents and caregivers in school activities lack of sensitivity towards the value of education for children, dedication and accountability on the part of teachers teaching is not joyful and too much content oriented lack of role models in the community in fact, some youth who are formally educated and sitting unemployed or who migrate to work serve as negative role models towards education Community orientation moving towards to generate money that generate knowledge the policy of continuous assessment is not really applied in practice a lot of children fail in junior classes the resource centers at the district level are not functioning adequately to achieve their objective many times children drop out of school for lack of some very basic educational material such as copies, pen, uniforms etc harmful practice of corporal punishment non-availability of scholarships for boys could be one reason for decreased interest among boys to continue in school. scholarships available for girls are insignificant and the amount does not increase when moving to higher grades, they do not serve as real incentive for parents and children to continue schooling. Justification: TSSP, the soft skills project (TVET), is targeted to improve the quality and relevance of education in Nepal especially at the secondary level of formal education. In the project the general education curriculum will be revised for grades 6-10 to give the

4 students more practical soft skills within the general subject framework. Additionally, a separate vocational stream will be introduced to grades The ultimate goal of the project is to increase the students employability after school by introducing the soft skills and to encourage them to entrepreneurship according to local sector needs. Tentatively, a ngo-project intervention consisting of three components is foreseen to address different aspects of the problem. Component one is built around capacity building especially together with district level resource centres to promote a more child friendly learning environment and component two around promoting accountability and transparency by increasing the interaction of different actors in the local environment. Finally, component three addresses the social protection problem by handing out material resources to marginalized groups and promoting inclusion of children with disabilities in to formal education. The proposed ngo-intervention and TSSP complement each other in various ways. Both have the same essential target; including ensuring more children enter into and continue formal education and increasing their post-graduate employment possibilities. Whereas, the TEVT soft skills project is focused on curriculum development and introducing the soft skills to make school environment more learner centred. Besides, work around social protection is proposed to bring in as strong and extremely relevant intervention in the TEVT soft skills project, to ensure that children from the most poor and marginalized sections, including those from excluded groups such as orphans disabled, children of single parents etc. are also able to benefit from this project. The three components being proposed can be seen as a supplement to TSSP s objectives. In addition to the above, orientation to understand and value work and working life is grossly missing in school curricula of grades 6-8. As a result, many school children who develop interest in vocational and technical education have to choose a trade without any prior knowledge about it. Therefore, it is imperative to try and introduce some form of life skills education in these grades. It would improve children s chances of completing basic education and increase their general knowledge and learning skills leading to improved employability. Guidance and counselling implemented should especially support those pupils who have difficulties with studying or who are in danger of dropping out. Proposed ngo-intervention: Component 1- Capacity building: the objective is to mobilise and strengthen the resource centres at the district level in order to achieve a more child friendly education environment and to reach out to the community advocating for continuation of children s schooling. This is achieved by investing in the capacity building of teachers to make them adapt more child centered and inclusive teaching techniques. TSSP aims to the same objective by using learner centred teaching approach that includes action research to strengthen the students capacity in soft skills. The mechanism to achieve this is to strengthen the institutional capacity of resource centres using the existing structures and resource at the district level. Possible points of cooperation could be division of labour between the two projects in capacity

5 building and teacher training. Also, NGOs have the capacity to reach the community in a more flexible way creating a favorable environment for formal schooling within the community. Also, introducing the learner centred teaching methodology to primary school can create an important continuum between the primary and secondary education making formal schooling an attractive option to both parents and children alike. Component 2 - Promoting accountability and transparency: the objective is to improve the learning environment by encouraging interaction between teachers, parent and the community. This should result in improved attendance of children in school in terms or regularity and motivation. TSSP does not have the capacity to reach out the whole community and advocate for education outside of creating the school environment an interesting one for children to attend to. Therefore, cooperation with an NGO in this matter is valuable for TEVT as the project benefits from increased enrolment and attendance rates. On the other hand, a revised curriculum with a new approach to learning is hoped to encourage children to stay in school. Thus, cooperation between the two projects has the potential to be very successful. Component 3 - Social Protection support: the NGO will identify the material needs of children from marginalized groups and support purchasing of educational material as a part of social protection. The component might also include a pilot scholarship programme for unprivileged boys from marginalised communities or weak socioeconomic background who sometimes have more obstacles in reaching formal education than girls. Also, the component includes integrating disabled children in mainstream education through targeted social services. TEVT project has an inclusive approach to education addressing local needs but does not include separate components of social protection. Furthermore, integration of special groups into the formal schooling has not been especially emphasized in the project thus the NGO s expected social protection expertise is welcome when creating lasting structures at the community level. Moreover, TEVT approach does not include material support to individual children, groups of children or scholarship schemes. As in component two, cooperation between the projects could create synergy and prove to be beneficial in terms of enrolment rate. Key activities: Component 1: Capacity building: Mobilise and strengthen the Resource centre at the district level so that better quality of education and a child friendly environment can be promoted in schools encouraging children and their parents to continue schooling Invest in capacity building of teachers to make them more child sensitive and improve their skills in providing education using inclusive and gender sensitive, child friendly and joyful learning techniques. Building teacher s morale as role model for students. Expanding systematic use of Continuous Assessment with necessary remedial support. Component 2: Promoting accountability and transparency:

6 Develop mechanisms to increase the interface between teachers, parents and community members at large, resulting in improved involvement and accountability of these critical actors leading to improved attendance and regularity of children in schools. Putting the policy in practice motivating teachers to spend extra time on teaching so as to reduce the percentage of students failed. Component 3: Social Protection support: Identify and provide social prtection support such as educational material and resources for relevant vulnerable and marginalized groups of children as a part of promoting social protection for them. Try, on a pilot basis, a scholarship for certain groups of boys, e.g., orphan and/or abandoned children Promote inclusion of disabled children (especially those with moderate disabilities) in mainstream school by taking them through a time bound bridge course (targeted social service) that helps prepare them for getting admitted to an age appropriate class. Implementation Mechanism Technical Team A small Technical team of experts representing MOE/DOE, TSSP and the NGO (to be contracted) will be constituted to oversee the implementation and to ensure coordination in fulfilling objectives of both TSSP and this project. The team will determine the following: Selection of districts and school communities for program intervention. Selection of partners to work closely with local civil society organizations Selection of Resource centers and resource persons dedicated for this task Development of tools and implementation strategies, and Conducting baseline survey Periodic supervision, reviews and updates to senior MEO management and DPs Technical backstop during program implementation Liaise with senior MEO management and DPs on implementation challenges The role of the NGO Partner Overall project design in consultation with the Technical team Project management and periodic reporting to concerned authorities Selection of partner organizations to implement the program at the district level Capacity building of staff and partners implementing the program Supervision, monitoring and technical support in collaboration with the technical team Resource management and progress reporting