Inclusive education in Nepal: a study of governance networks in selected municipalities.

'Leaving no one behind' has become the slogan for global efforts to make sure every child attends school by 2030. We believe there is something to be learnt from Nepal's efforts that had led to close to 100 per cent enrolment among boys and girls before the Covid 19 pandemic struck and schools were closed. What makes Nepal's achievements particularly interesting is the context of poverty, violent conflict, an earthquake and political volatility, and that Nepal is home to more than one hundred ethnic and caste groups, many of whom inhabit remote mountain regions. We wanted to investigate understandings and practices inclusion, identify drivers of inclusion processes, and the role that collaboration and networks play, how the Covid 19 pandemic was managed and how it impacted on processes of inclusion and exclusion? Moreover, in the last decade Nepal has been transitioning from a centralised state to a federal state with comprehensive powers being transferred to municipalities. We wanted to see how the new municipalities have grasped the opportunities that have resulted from their newly acquired powers and how they have responded to the Covid 19 pandemic. For the quantitative survey, we randomly selected four schools from each of Nepal's seven provinces, and in addition one integrated school from each province. 35 schools in all. For the survey and in depth interviews we included representatives of local authorities, school management committees, politicians, civil society, teachers, students, and parents to obtain data on whether and how networks and change agents contributed to inclusive education. Due to the pandemic the team was unable to implement the survey according to plan, and the survey did not start until the fall of 2021. Informed by the survey data, we ranked schools according to their scores on inclusion variables and selected six schools ranging from low to high scores on inclusion variables for in depth study. We found that devolved powers and the local elections in 2017 had created spaces for local initiatives on inclusive education, especially infrastructure development and the employment of temporary teachers, and we found some examples of collaborative governance contributing to inclusion, but the team could not establish a systematic pattern between network characteristics and inclusion in the survey analysis. Provision of economic support for students, such as stipends, exemption from school fees, free textbooks etc. was the strategy for inclusion most frequently reported. This strategy reflects that inclusive schools in Nepal is equated with access to schools. Thus, the priority has been to facilitate enrollment of children by providing economic support. How well children perform at school is subsequently explained by their home situation, and not by how children are taught in classrooms or how the school is run. The way in which teaching is conducted has consequently received limited attention in studies and in policy formulation. Teachers’ view is that standardized teaching has the potential to benefit every child as every child is exposed to the same content, disregarding the notion of adapting teaching to the individual child. Children from low castes and ethnic minorities tend to drop put and show lower scores on performance indicators. This is valid after controlling for income, which suggests that strategies relying solely on income are not sufficient to achieve inclusive education. Data on the Covid 19 response showed that collaboration among actors in the school sector led to more support for schools, which resulted in more options for learning during Covid 19, including access to online teaching. Schools that had more resources benefitted from the supply of extra resources during Covid 19, whereas schools that pre-Covid 19 had less human and financial resources received less support, further cementing patterns of exclusion. Support did not reflect the extent to which schools had been affected by Covid 19. Students from well-off families participated in online education whereas students from all backgrounds participated in ‘teaching in communities.’ Ethnicity, caste, and gender did not make a significant difference in participation in alternative modes of education (when controlling for income). The study is a collaborative effort between Oslo Metropolitan University, the University College London, Tribhuvan University, the University of South-Eastern Norway and Social and Academic Innovations (SAIPL), Nepal. Project website: www.ienepal.org

The project has generated competence among staff at the Faculty of Education at Tribhuvan university in Kathmandu, and universities in Norway and the United Kingdom on an extremely under-researched topic, e.i. processes of inclusion of ethnic minorities, castes, and persons with disability in schools across Nepal. Competence has been gained on inclusive teaching practices in schools about which there was hardly any prior knowledge, and which may inform not only research but also teacher training at Tribhuvan university. The project has identified challenges linked to the transition to regular classrooms from ‘special classes’ for children with disabilities, a topic on which there was prior to this project practically no knowledge nor competence. For the individual school and the school sector administration, the project data is potentially very useful for informing practice on how to manage this transition effectively. Project findings on the role of governance actors in promoting and facilitating inclusive education, including in a crisis-situation, such as the Covid 19 pandemic, and how inclusive education requires the engagement of local leaders and networks to be successful is important to increase awareness among teaching and research staff and practitioners on the implementation challenges involved in achieving inclusive education. Due to our focus on the practice of inclusive education in schools and municipalities, the findings are highly relevant to inform practice. In terms of methods, the team has gained competence on questionnaire design and more advanced statistical analysis, as well as on using a combination of qualitative and quantitative research methods in article writing. In terms of impact, members of the research group in Nepal have excellent formal and informal contact with policy makers, public administration and organisations working for the rights of minorities and persons with disabilities in the field of inclusive education, and hence will make use of the data accrued by the project in dialogue with policy makers, such as for policy formulation. In addition to the Faculty of Education at Tribhuvan University being a highly influential actor in Nepal, the Faculty is by far the largest education faculty in Nepal, with campuses spread throughout Nepal. This means that the project data and publications have the potential to influence teacher training and hence practice in schools throughout Nepal, ina more inclusive direction informed by findings on the challenges in local communities and schools. This research project has spearheaded long term collaboration between Tribhuvan university and OsloMet as the two universities was awarded a six-year grant by the NORAD funded NORHED programme to continue collaboration, capacity-building, and research on inclusive education, in a network that also included INN university in Norway and Mid-West university in Nepal.

The objective of the project is to identify those characteristics of governance networks that effectively contribute towards inclusive education, with a specific focus on change agents and network leadership. In the context of the Covid pandemic, it is also necessary to understand how these networks have responded to the schooling crisis arising from the pandemic. More specifically, the projects seeks to contribute new knowledge on how political and administrative leaders, schools, communities, civil society, development partners, parents and students in selected municipalities in Nepal work to co-produce inclusive education. Conceptually, we apply a framework that combines concepts from network governance theories with concepts from theories on local politics in the South Asian context. We are interested in the dynamics among local stakeholders and in understanding the politics of such networks, in particular around competition for network leadership and crisis response, and how this impacts on inclusive education outcomes. The Covid pandemic has added a new crisis to Nepal's recent history, and as schools have been closed, the response of network actors, school management, teachers, parents, students and development partners to the crisis has emerged as one of the key research questions. The Nepalese experience with inclusive education is likely to be highly relevant as a model for education in resource scarce countries that are ethnically and culturally diverse, and where discrimination, including gender based discrimination, is a key challenge in order to achieve inclusive education. The project team will stay in continuous dialogue with Norwegian funding agencies in the education sector, by debriefs and end of project workshops in Kathmandu and Oslo. We plan to set up a resource/user groups of Norwegian NGOs working on inclusive education. Moreover, we intend to give feed-back to the Government of Nepal, development partners, i.e. the World Bank and UNICEF, the Municipal Association of Nepal and the Nepal Association of Rural Municipalities through meetings and dialogue, and the end of project workshop in Kathmandu.