Local Understanding and Practices on Scholarship Management
Date
2009-05
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Master of Philosophy in Education
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.
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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.
Description
Keywords
Scholarship, Educational management, Foreign study, Students, Nepal, Education