Bijaya Kumar Shrestha
One of the most rising business and development that we saw in this century is fast paced growth of Information Technology, ranging from hand of common human to bigger industries, from earth to beyond. This idea has a huge impact in today’s world whether it’s personal or professional. There are lot bright side of ICT and its development, but this article tends to focus on probably one of the darkest side of ICT mostly in relation to our government’s master plan on ICT in education.
It was time period when government had the master plan 2013-2017 in ICT in education. I along with my friends had an opportunity to visit a primary school located in a municipality nearby Kathmandu in 2018, there was a huge gap of what ICT is and how this Master Plan had a huge blow as the school does not even had a single computer. The idea of integrating ICT in Education and giving ICT Education to the children is far behind the imagination of the current situation.
During the conversation, Head Teacher shared us the fact that one of the donor agencies from Kathmandu had donated them few machines, but they were outdated and were the waste box, in the name of the Computer. As they had a bitter experience, the school did not accept the proposal from the donor agency afterwards. Since, they neither had an adequate budget to install a new machine at their school nor have the presence of government nor did any donor agencies ever understand their need of adding at least a computer in their school.
As we had a Master plan of ICT in the back of our head, but looking at that sort of condition we had a huge blow regarding our plan. Further, with the permission of the head teacher, I went to visit the students in Grade Five. During the interaction, I sensed that the students so excited when I pronounced the word ‘COMPUTER’ in their class. Majority of them have seen the computer, whether within their locality or any means or medium they were somehow aware of the device named “Computer”. However, they never had a chance to touch this machine till the date. I could sense their desperation at that moment while interacting with them, they want to touch it, use it, and learn it. Those little fingers’ desperation was so vivid at that moment waiting to have a sense of hitting the keys on the keyboard and enjoy with the digital output displayed over the monitor. In reality, those inquisitive eyes were waiting for the ‘dream machine’ to arrive at their school.
After few interactions with the students, I went to the head teacher again, he was so hopeful and excited, had there been a computer in their school, he along with his faculties would have sit for the training to learn how to use the machine in my presence at their school. Nevertheless, this was only their emotional hope, as they had no machine at their school. They would also want to keep the financial record of their school, academic record of their school digitally if there was at least a machine. Even with many of these hopes and excitements, I couldn’t utter a word further, when I heard the answer from head teacher to my question, “What do you do with Educational Management Information System (EMIS)?” (EMIS is a simple excel application that the government has distributed to all the school and has mandated to keep the entire records of the teachers, students and school properties digitally inserted in this application. Every year the schools are supposed to deliver the updated EMIS to the respective resource center.)
To my question, he honestly replied, “sometimes we pay about fifteen hundred rupees extra money to the resource person, and he/ she does on our behalf.” Seriously, what this extra pay is for? Why does a resource person charge this additional sum to the school? Who forced it to happen? Moreover, why did it happen? With these series of questions, at the back of my head, for me, the honest answer from the head teacher is a huge challenge to that thick booklet written on ICT in Education Master Plan 2013 to 2017. The government had prepared and released the plan aiming to introduce ICT education in every school by the end of 2017, and this is 2018. The school is already a year behind than it was supposed to achieve the aim of the Master Plan. This can be the symbolic representation of multiple schools. What can be the best example than this, to demonstrate the failure of this plan?
As per my observation, when we continued listening to the head teacher and the students, the first and common problem they pointed out was the lack of infrastructure. The second was, the government had set the rule that the school must keep the updated record in EMIS and school had followed silently but lacked the proper human resource. Simply, the school was thrown into the pond without training to swim. Thus, the school should get quick safeguard. These two problems should get the quick response to make the school and its students experience the use of ICT.
Even though the school was not able to install a computer, both the head teacher and students were found to have a huge faith in ‘computer’, a dream machine for them. They want computers in their school; they have the desire to teach computers. They were far from achieving that in reality, but deep down there was excitement and hope.
[Shrestha is a School Principal with a demonstrated history of working in the higher education industry. He is also an independent Software Project Manager and Education Technology consultant. His skills are in Education Leadership, Educational Technology, Software Project Management, and Organizational Culture. He also has a strong education professional with a Master of Technology – MTech in Information Technology from Kathmandu University (KU). He is the recipient of the Erasmus Mundus Scholarship, and US Embassy Nepal’s International Visitors Leadership Program (IVLP) fellow in ‘Education in Digital Age, 2019’.]