The 2015 earthquake damaged 7,923 schools and 49,681 classrooms. Of these, 6,085 schools have been rebuilt and another 1,468 are under construction.
Among the rebuilt is Lalitpur’s oldest school, Patan Secondary School, which was handed over to school management on April 19 by the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA)-backed Emergency Reconstruction Project (ERSP).
Designed to be a ‘complete school’ with multi-hazard resilient structures, the school has a concrete foundation raft designed to withstand 8 magnitude tremors.
The Rs 320 million building is now equipped with solar power and rainwater harvesting, furniture for Early Childhood Development classes to grade 12, separate laboratories for computer science, physics, biology and chemistry, retrofitted conference halls and bathrooms and hand-washing stations with adequate water supply.
Despite the major facelift, the school, like many other refurbished government schools across Nepal, has not seen a reshaping of the administrative and educational methods.
Some of the schools Nepali Times surveyed showed that despite the seismic-resistant design, newly-rebuilt schools in and around Kathmandu lack preparedness drills leaving school-goers vulnerable despite the sturdy structures.
“Given the scale of the 2015 earthquake, our reconstruction process has been quite satisfactory but we are not prepared enough for future mega-quakes,” says Surya Narayan Shrestha, executive director of the National Society of Earthquake Technology (NSET) Nepal.
Reconstructed schools like Patan Secondary School are also dealing with the lack of enough teachers and students to fill new classrooms, as well as maintenance budgets from the Education Ministry.
Federal and state interference in the local-level educational process is stifling progress, as teaching standards in government schools are not improved, curricula remain outdated and teachers are underpaid and unmotivated despite the flashy new buildings.
While post-quake reconstruction should have diverted attention from infrastructure to quality of instruction and future disaster preparedness, that has not been the case. As Covid pushes education towards distanced learning, improved infrastructure alone will not be able to guarantee the delivery of quality education.
“The 2015 earthquake and this pandemic could have been an opportunity to upgrade both hardware and software of our education system, but the teaching standards have instead, downgraded.” says Rajendra Dahal, editor of Shikshyak monthly.
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