Educating Reeti

I am very pleased to be able to report major progress in our aim of supporting the wonderful Kitini School.

To remind you, this is the state (government) secondary school that serves Reeti's primary school along with other village schools that lie in the hills above Kathmandu valley. The school is special in that it achieves results that rival the best of Nepal's private schools. For example, last year it enjoyed a 100% pass rate in the Grade 10 School Leaver's Certificate (SLC) examination. The remarkable thing is that 70% of the pupils are girls (this reflects the discrimination of parents sending their sons to private schools) and 85% of students are from lower caste families. So these are very worthy beneficiaries.

Under the inspirational and ambitious leadership of the Principal, Mr Saroj KC, and his colleagues, the school is really going places. Traditionally most state schools teach only in the Nepali language while private schools teach in English. That has changed at Kitini with classes now being taught in both languages. This development makes all the difference for students who aspire to higher education where English is the language used at universities in Nepal and overseas. Students from Kitini School can now expect a more seamless transition to universities and colleges without having to boost their command of English.

The really exciting development is that ChoraChori has secured the grant funding that has allowed the school to set up science labs for the teaching of both biology and physics. The impact of this is that the labs will cater for 270 students in grades 8 to 10 - and many more in future as the science faculty grows. But, most importantly, before we provided these labs the only possibility at Kitini for grade 11 and 12 students was to study Management or Humanities.

The Principal says: "After SLC the students who wanted to study Science had been forced to choose Humanities or Management faculties as they could not afford to go to Private colleges far away in the city. Now with the construction of the Physics and Biology Labs students can continue their higher studies here”.  Teacher Dinesh Kumar Thapa added "We are very thankful for the support with the help of which we can now shift form a theory based curriculum to a more practical curriculum which will help the students and teachers alike by making the learning process more interactive and innovative".  Fourteen year old Kabita told us: "I think we can’t get good marks by learning theory only. Now with the new labs we can understand the scientific concepts practically and get good grades.” Kabita, who is currently in grade 9, wants to become a dermatologist. So studying Science is vital if she is to realise her dreams.  

The other piece of great news is that our friends at Hatemalo in Germany have granted us the funds we needed to purchase new computers for the computer suite. These will be delivered later this month. That just leaves us needing to find £4,700 to set up a chemistry lab that will allow the teaching of a complete Science curriculum. The pupils are suddenly optimistic. Rajiv, a 16 year old pupil in Grade 10 comments: “People think that government school students aren’t able to compete with students from private schools. This was partly true, but now with our school providing English medium classes and also practical skills in the labs we can compete with the student from those expensive schools.”

Finally, please note that we are still trying to find the funding to set up mushroom cultivation as a sustainable income generation activity for the primary schools. As per my last report this equates to £600 per mushroom shed that will yield a four times return on investment. The mushroom growing season is now ending with the approach of the monsoon, but we hope to launch this project in September.

Many thanks!

Links:

• ChoraChori's education projects in Nepal