ANNUAL STATUS OF EDUCATION REPORT (ASER) 2019 PROVINCE 2, NEPAL A CONSULTATIVE REPORT Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) Nepal 2019 Province 2 (Rural and Urban) Date of Publication : December 2019 This is a consultative ASER Province 2, 2019 Report based on the data received from Palikas collected by community assessers till June 2019. Photos: All photos taken by ASER Volunteers and Our Partner Organizations during the survey. Layout & Design : Amogh Dhakhwa, ASER Nepal Published by: ASER Nepal Post Box No. 9434, Gyaneshwor, Kathmandu Partner Organizations: Supported by: DISCLAIMER: The information provided in the report does not reflect the views of the donors or the partner organizations. ACKNOWLEDGEMENT Improving the state of education in Nepal requires good policy and leadership. But it also requires a citizenry that is concerned about education and actively seeks to understand its issues and challenges. A citizen-led assessment (CLA) like ASER depends on the efforts of many volunteers. So we must begin by thanking the most important people in any CLA, the field volunteers that went walking from house-to- house and gathered data. We are very grateful to the 4844 youths from 136 palikas that gave up a week of their time to run this assessment. We would like to thank the Chief Minister, Ministers, Secretaries, Officers, Mayors and elected representatives of all the local governments in province 2 for their commitment to evidence-based decision making. We hope the evidence produced by this CLA will encourage mayors and local municipal governments to engage and trust the youth in their areas to gather evidence on important matters concerning local governance. We are also grateful to the various community organizations and schools that supported us in recruiting volunteers, hosting orientations and trainings, providing training and recruitment venues, and allowing us to store the large volume of paper needed to survey 45,550 households. We express our gratitude to all the civil society leaders from each of these institutions who welcomed us and made their personnel and resources available to us. We are very grateful to our Master Trainers for their critical work in making the CLA successful. The 136 master trainers volunteered 4 weeks of their time to adopt the multi-step training process. First, they learned how to conduct a CLA themselves, then they recruited the volunteers in each ward of Province 2, then taught the CLA methods to those local volunteers and finally supervised the data collection process to ensure the data was valid. We acknowledge the support from the training team that coached and mentored the Master Trainers. We would like to thank key members from the training team, Pavitra Bahadur Gautam, Prabesh Raj Joshi, Kriti Shree Giri, Anuradha Shrestha and Samjhana Balami, for their time and efforts to make the Master Trainers’ Training fruitful. Officers from the Central Bureau of Statistics, especially the Household Sampling Unit, and Statisticians from Tribhuvan University and Kathmandu University School of Management volunteered their time and expertise to set the assessment methodology. We are especially grateful to Anaraj Tiwari, Balkrishna Khadka, and Chandra KC for helping us finalize the assessment methodology. Without their support, it would not have been possible for us to navigate the many statistical and technical issues a CLA of this scale possesses. The assessment tools and survey questionnaires were developed with support from many intellectuals and experts. Ketan and Winny from the PAL Network Secretariat were instrumental during the final stages of building the Minimum Proficiency Framework and the ASER Assessment tools. Sincere thanks to Shyam Acharya from the Education Review Office, Ministry of Education; Prof. Ramesh Bhattarai, head of Nepali Curriculum Experts Committee at Curriculum Development Center; professors from Tribhuvan University; school teachers from Brihaspati Vidya Sadan (Kathmandu), Jana Uddhar Secondary School (Kathmandu), Churiyamai Secondary School (Makawanpur) and Kalika Secondary School (Sindhupalchowk) for their - 1 - support in developing the ASER assessment tools. Kumar Thapa, Pradip Giri, Keshab Khatiwada, Mamata Shankar Joshi, Anjila Shrestha, and Rajan Maharjan deserve special thanks for supporting our pilot test in Kathmandu, Makwanpur, Sindhupalchok and Sindhuli. Our designer Amogh Dhakhwa and printer Ram Kaji Khadgi supported us in the layout and production of the material we needed to conduct this assessment. Sabhyata Timsina from the Karkhana research team paid careful attention to minimize errors and simplify the language. We are grateful for their diligence and commitment. We also wish to thank the ASER India team and the PAL Network for their support over the years. We wish to extend a very special thanks to Ranajit Bhattacharya, Sujit Kumar and Vikash Kumar from the ASER India team who have been instrumental in the success of this assessment. They ensured that all of us in Nepal had opportunities to learn from ASER India’s 14 years of experience in citizen-led assessment. Nothing in this world is possible without a great team and we were lucky to have in our team Kshitiz Basnet, and other supporting hands from Street Child Nepal; Pramila Bisunke and Samjhana Balami from ASER Nepal; and Nawal Kishor Yadav, Dineshwar Shah, and several other encouraging friends from Aasaman Nepal who support our mission to ensure that every Nepali child learns. This assessment has been possible from the support from UK Aid Direct, and their support has been crucial in making this assessment happen. Co-directors of ASER Nepal Rajib Timalsina & Sakar Pudasaini - 2 - TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENT 1 ACRONYMS 4 WHY A CONSULTATIVE REPORT? 5 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY 7 CONTEXT 13 METHODOLOGY 17 FINDINGS AT PROVINCE LEVEL 28 FINDINGS AT DISTRICT LEVEL 35 FINDINGS AT LOCAL GOVERNMENT LEVEL 76 CONCLUSION 86 - 3 - ACRONYMS ACER Australian Council for Educational Research ASER Annual Status in Education Report CAS Continuous Assessment System CBS Central Bureau of Statistics CDC Curriculum Development Center CLA Citizen Led Assessments CSO Civil Society Organizations DFID Department for International Development ECD Early Childhood Development ERO Education Review Office GoN Government of Nepal KG Kindergarten LG Local Government MDG Millennium Development Goals NASA National Assessment of Student Achievement OOS Out of School PAL People’s Action for Learning PPS Probability Propotional to Size PWD People with Disabilities SCN Street Child Nepal SDG Sustainable Development Goals - 4 - WHY A CONSULTATIVE REPORT? n early 2019, a household-based citizen-led assessment (CLA) was carried out in Province 2 using the ASER Nepal methodology and testing tools. The initiative was supported by Street Child Nepal’s Breaking the Bonds program (funded by DFID). The assessment work was jointly implemented by Street IChild Nepal, AASAMAN and ASER Nepal. Citizen assessors visited all wards in the 136 local government units or palikas in Province 2. In each ward, they visited households selected through random sampling. A total of 44,000 households were surveyed. In each surveyed household, basic demographic data was collected from all household members. Household members from age 5 to 16 were given an one-on-one oral learning assessment test in three areas - English literacy, Nepali literacy and Math. The testing tools for each of the three assessments were pegged to minimum competency at the 3rd grade level of the national curriculum. The consultative report is being released to start a conversation on the role citizen-led assessments can play in supporting the education ecosystem and education policy-making in Nepal. While some discussion about the results of assessments are appropriate, we encourage stakeholders to focus the discussion on the role a CLA could play in the education ecosystem focusing on the current learning levels and potential interventions/methodologies to address the learning crisis. The ASER has a rich history across South Asia of engaging youth, local governments and policy-makers around the common issue of learning outcomes. CLAs have also demonstrated value across the Global South. But as these efforts are new to Nepal, discussions on the specific forms they should take in Nepal are necessary. - 5 - This report aims to engage stakeholders on: 1. the aims of a CLA and the appropriateness of those aims in Nepal 2. identifying actors who may benefit from a CLA’s easy to execute methodology 3. locating a Nepali ASER within the wider set of learning data being generated, such as NASA 4. Identifying where ASER findings could feed into the policy-making and program development process Based on input provided during the consultative phase, a final analysis of the ASER Pradesh 2 data will be conducted. A final report will follow. QUESTIONS FOR CONSULTATION 1. How can a low-stakes, orally conducted, household-based assessment add to existing data on learning? Additionally, does an oral assessment give us more details on students who are recorded as failing on written exams because they lack foundational literacy and math skills? 2. Should special emphasis be given to improve the visibility of Out of School children whose learning outcomes are significantly worse than their in-school peers? 3. Would an assessment that is easy to execute and understand be useful to the subnational government or CSOs at the local level? Local governments now have greater responsibilities in the education