In Nepal we are working on the development of a bachelor’s program for education. Unfortunately there was a delay in the legislation process and therefore the Nepal Open University (NOU) decided to postpone the development process for some months. In April NOU made a decision to start with a one year post graduate course instead of a four year bachelor’s course. A task group was formed of Pitambar Neupane from ECEC and Ruma Manandhar from NOU to develop the curriculum framework for the one year course. The task force submitted the first draft of the framework to the Dean of NOU. It is currently in the process of being reviewed.
Good progress was made on the development of model schools. In January and February an INTENT-delegation visited the municipalities of Itahari and Mahalaxmi and talked about the possibility of working together to make three public schools and two institutional (private) schools model schools. The municipalities and schools are willing to cooperate and work together. This is a partnership model where the municipalities will invest necessary resources and INTENT will support the training, consultation and any other program required. NOU has agreed to make it part of the teacher education process but will not be actively involved. We are now the process of selecting schools and signing agreement with twelve model schools and we will establish a baseline and start the training program.