People's Participation in Community School Management: A Case Study of Lamachour VDC

Abstract

Lamachour is a city-oriented VDC, located at the north-west border of Pokhara Sub-metropolitan City of Kaski district. There are four community schools in this VDC. They are struggling for survival due to decrease in number of students in recent years. Since the responsibility of management of the community schools is given to communities, the crisis in these schools indicates that there is ineffectiveness in people's participation in the school management.Thus, this study has been focused on people's participation. As per the survey, females are backward in education than the males. Among the population, 11.9 percent are still illiterate in which females are 9.2 percent and males are 2.7 percent.In Nepal, the number of students in community schools is gradually decreasing whereas in institutional schools it is gradually increasing in recent years. In the study area too, the number of students in the community schools has decreased but it has increased in institutional schools in those years. In respondents' view, the main causes of decrease in number of students in community schools are low quality and carelessness.As far as status of participants in SMC and PTA of the community schools is concerned, there is a majority of males over females; majority of Brahman/Chhetri over Janajati and Dalit; majority of people from upper economic status over people from lower economic status and majority of people from upper political status over lower political status.On the other hand, majority of the students in these schools are Dalit and Janajati and from the families with lower economic status and lower political status. The community schools under study are highly dominated by political parties and their leaders/cadres. It is found that caste/ethnicity, gender, economic status, population change, political status, government policy,awareness/education, age, geographic condition and conflict have affected participation.