Health and Education Assessment 2017 SOS Children’s Villages Nepal HEALTH & EDUCATION ASSESSMENT 2017 SOS CHILDREN’S VILLAGE NEPALHEALTH & Final Report EDUCATION ASSESSMENT 2017 OS CHILDREN’S VILLAGE NEPAL Submitted by Nepal Development Research Institute (NDRI) Pulchowk, Lalitpur April 2018 Prepared by: NEPAL DEVELOPMENT RESEARCH INSTITUTE (NDRI) i Health and Education Assessment 2017 SOS Children’s Villages Nepal April 2018 Study Team: Dr. Manjeshwori Singh, Team Leader Mr. Ganga Ram Gautam, Education Expert Dr. Sujata Sapkota, Health Expert and Researcher Ms. Pratigya Regmi, Researcher ii Preface Guided by the mission of providing family care to the children at risk of losing parental care and children without parental care, SOS Nepal offers them a supportive village environment where children live and grow to their potential with their mothers, brothers and sisters. SOS has been supporting children with quality education through seven schools across different districts of Nepal and it has been providing technical and vocational training for young people through two vocational training centers. It also runs a medical center for community people in Bardiya and a national training center in Kavre. SOS Children’s Villages International’s 2030 Strategy has identified seven strategic themes to ensure sustainability in its programmes through practical measures in its services. The themes include 1) innovative alternative child care 2) strengthen families 3) empower young people 4) advocate for children 5) mobilize people for quality child care 6) create a simpler, agile and digital organization and 7) invest for funding growth. In order to ensure quality care of children, SOS has proposed a multi-pronged approach to include local stakeholders and build an alliance among them. By doing this, SOS can concentrate on the core components of the programme aligning the rest to the priorities and agenda of the local stakeholders that include national governments, local governments, development partners, organizations that are running the similar programmes, if any and the community at large. The current study is one of the initiatives in this direction that aims to explore; a) whether the SOS’s services are reaching out to the children of the target groups b) the best placed stakeholders to provide the service in terms of accessibility, affordability and quality education and health care services to the target group children and c) if the Member Associations (MA) are financially self-sufficient to provide the expected services. This report is an attempt to seek answers to these prominent questions so that a well thought-out plan could be worked out to manage the stakeholders’ engagement in the services of the children that SOS has been involved so far. Here are some of the key messages from the report. SOS IS REACHING OUT TO THE TARGET GROUP AND BEYOND Contribution of SOS has been recognized in Nepal for serving the children not only from the SOS’s target groups but also for the children of the community at large. By bringing children from across the board in the community, SOS has communicated the message that all children are equal and all of them have the right to quality education. In addition to this, community is very pleased that SOS has provided quality education in the affordable price. Community members have a high regard to the SOS schools and parents are very happy to have SOS in their community as a center of quality education. iii SOS HAS BEEN RECOGNIZED AS A CHAMPION OF QUALITY EDUCATION Quality in education is a buzz word in Nepal and both the government and non-government sectors are working hard to address quality issues in Education through various interventions. This report indicates that SOS Hermann Gmeiner Schools in Nepal are considered to be the champions of quality education not only in terms of providing education in classrooms but also providing parental care and overall development of both the target and non-target group of children, however, its main concern is to reaching out and serving the target group. The high application rate during admission time, competitive enrollment process and the branding of SOS in career development of students show that SOS has been able to brand itself as a center of quality education. Similarly, most of the SOS schools have ‘A+’ rank in the government ranking. Nepal government has categorized non-state funding schools into several categories and SOS Hermann Gmeiner Schools have been ranked in the top category. Adequate infrastructure, quality teachers, conducive and inclusive learning environment, completion rate of the students and affordability were identified as the key parameters used in the ranking1. OTHER STAKEHOLDERS IN EDUCATION AND HEALTH SERVICES ARE STILL STRUGGLING FOR QUALITY The report discusses the involvement of the other government and private stakeholders in education and health services in the areas where SOS schools and medical centers are located. Private sector service providers seem to be offering quality services but they are very expensive and beyond the reach of the people living in poverty. Public school system and government health facilities are struggling in the quality issues and they lack even the basic amenities required for quality services. A high majority of children in Nepal still attend government schools but quality has always been a major issue as only less than 50% of the student’s complete high school education from the public school system. Though, there are random initiatives among the government schools to improve their quality, it will take a while to institutionalize such initiatives in a more sustainable manner. Thus, though there are stakeholders that provided education and health services in the areas where SOS schools and health facilities are located, it will be pre-mature to expect quality services from these stakeholders at least for some time. SOS HAS A POTENTIAL TO DEVELOP AS A LEARNING ORGANIZATION Nepal has undergone a big political shift from centralized governance to the decentralized management. According to the new constitution of Nepal, school education and basic health services are part of the local 1 The ranking of SOS Hermann Gmeiner Schools under grade A was reported by the school principals and government authorities interviewed. iv government’s responsibility. With this provision the local governments are looking for ways of improving the quality of education and health services in their communities. In this context, SOS could collaborate with the local governments and create SOS as a learning organization for mentoring head-teachers, enhancing teachers’ quality and creating quality learning environment in the schools. SUSTAINABILITY IS POSSIBLE BUT IT IS A LONG TERM PROCESS The report mentions the views of the stakeholders how SOS education and health services can sustain in the long run and how local stakeholders can contribute to it. One of the points that emerged during the discussion was the need of a phase-wise sustainable plan to engage the stakeholders in various components of education and health programmes. Including more fee paying students from the community, collaboration with the local and provincial governments, corporate partnership to support the children of target groups were some of the strategies suggested in this report. Another possibility that can be explored to sustain SOS’s services is the collaboration with the provincial governments which are in the making at present. Budhanilkantha school in Kathmandu and Gandaki Boarding School in Pokhara are the examples of such partnership between the government and international partners. Since the SOS schools are already recognized for quality education and they are located in different provinces of Nepal, the provincial governments can partner with SOS to gradually take over the management of the schools with the funding provision by the provincial government. SOS schools are integral parts of the Nepali communities and stakeholders do want them to continue their services. Since Nepal is going through a big transition phase and still struggling to manage the political transition, SOS should continue its services in Nepal in the current form at least for some years. At the same time, sustainability plan should be worked out involving the key stakeholders on the ground. The Study Team v Acknowledgements Nepal Development Research Institute (NDRI) is pleased to be a part of SOS’s Health & Education Assessment project. We thank SOS Children’s Villages Nepal for entrusting NDRI to carry out such an important study and express our sincere thanks to Mr. Ishowri Prasad Sharma, National Director, for extending requisite administrative and management support in organizing and hosting Health & Education Assessment successfully in Nepal and to Mr. Nabin Bajracharya, Director-Programme, for extending overall coordination among field teams, and explaining local context of Health & Education Assessment in proper light. We express our gratitude to the members of SOS International Office for Asia, Mr. Subrata Banerjee, Programme Advisor- Review & Assessment and Mr. S. Nambi Varatharajan, Consultant, Programme Development Department, for facilitating, guiding and managing Health & Education assessment in order to accomplish the exercise successfully. Furthermore, we would like to thank all the participants for their kind participation in the study. Our sincere thank goes to Dr. Hari Lamsal, Joint Secretary, Ministry of Education, Government of Nepal,