Local Understanding and Practices on Scholarship Management

Abstract

Nepal is a multiethnic, multilingual, multi-religious and multi cultural country with geographical diversities. It has caste-based hierarchical social structure and norms. Such features of society provide special position for some castes and some fall at the bottom of societal framework. Schooling in Nepal, in a broader sense, has been influenced by this hierarchical social structure. Despite the governmental efforts to ensure equitable access to all school age children from different segments of the society, still many more children are outside the school system. Of several interventions to bring them into school system, scholarship is considered to be a very important strategy for fulfilling the stated objectives of achieving the national goal of Education for All. In this context, this study dealt with the understanding and practices of scholarship management at the school level. In a specific manner, this study focused on assessing the processes, actors involved in scholarship management and their perceptions, identification of gaps as well as possible measures for addressing the gaps in scholarship management. I reviewed literatures on concept of right based approach to education and system theory, scholarship related policies, and previous researches relevant to the topic. This study is based on the information obtained from the purposively selected six schools of Kathmandu valley and Kavre district. Head teachers, teachers, students, parents and members of school management committee were interviewed and interacted for the purpose of uncovering their understandings on scholarships and practices of scholarship management. Hence, I employed qualitative method in this study. iii

Different practices were observed in the management of scholarship in different schools and some gaps in understanding and practices were also noticed. By applying centralized approach, scholarship policies are developed at the national level with little or no consultation with the school level actors, which keeps policy makers far way from the ground realities. Late delivery of scholarship funds to the schools, use of different criteria for selecting and distributing scholarships rather than following the centrally agreed upon criteria in the scholarship management guidelines, a little consultation with the parents and students while selecting the scholarship recipients, and the lack of information on and awareness of the purpose of scholarship among recipient students and their parents were major issues explored in my study. Poorer students are little benefited from the little scholarship amount because it is hard for them to manage indirect costs of education. Most of the parents were found indifferent and unable to discuss the scholarship provision. Gaps in the individual, institutional and systemic capacity certainly affected the effectiveness of scholarship management at school level. For effective scholarship management at school level, improvement in institutional aspects, operational aspects and some ideological aspects would be required. It means there is a need in overall targeting, deciding coverage and identifying operational modalities. However, in short, giving authority and flexibility to schools for making decisions on the selection of students would be much more beneficial than as it is now.