19 February 2010
Bijaya Sunar is a 13-year-old boy studying in a government school in western Nepal. He is at the top of his class and is confident about his future. “I want to be a professor,” says Bijaya, “I want to educate my community and my country.”
Bjaya is also a Dalit - a caste that traditionally is the poorest and most marginalized in Nepalese society. Had it not been for the government’s Education for All programme, which provides scholarships to Dalit children and others from poor families, Bijay would probably be facing a very different kind of future.
The Education for All programme, which is supported by DFID, provides free tuition, stationery and examination fees to students – opportunities that Bijay’s mother, Gyanu, never received.
Thirty-two year old Gyanu, who works as a farm labourer, left school prematurely due to a lack of money. “I feel terrible about stopping my schooling early,” she says, “but my father was a poor carpenter and couldn’t afford to keep me at school. I don’t want my children to end up farming like me.”
Gyanu has found it difficult to look after her family, with her work bringing in little money and Bijay’s father, who does not live with them, providing no assistance. “At one point, I considered suicide,” she says. “I wasn’t able to feed my sons and I was losing hope rapidly.”
The DFID-backed programme came to the family’s aid just in time. “Now they are doing very well at school,” says Gyanu about her sons. “All thanks to free education by the government and scholarships for poor people.”
Facts and stats
- DFID allocated £20 million between 2004 and 2009 to the Education for All programme.
- As a result of the programme, more than 750,000 additional children enrolled in primary school.
- In 2007, additional classrooms were built in 4,300 schools, 1,150 schools were rehabilitated, school grants were provided for the recruitment of 79,000 teachers, and scholarships were provided to 777,000 girls and 687,000 Dalit children.
- The total number of children enrolled in basic education increased from 4.3 million in 2004 to around 4.5 million in 2007 and gender parity in enrolments is close to being achieved.
