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This month we bring updates from Nepal through our conversation with volunteers from three areas: Lamjung, Nawalpur, and Sankhuwasabha. We are glad to see the students, schools, and the volunteers adapting to disruption due to COVID19 and trying their best to make sure the mission of education endures. These conversations took place in late October and early November 2020.

The schools are closed but have attempted to open in alternate schedule where odd/even id numbers are used to divide the students into two groups and one group comes to school each day. They have not been able to run alternate schedule as much as they would like so schooling remains mostly disrupted.

In some areas, the schools have sent teachers to assist with home schooling. The teachers visit the homes or neighborhoods and spend 15-30 minutes with the students in an open space maintaining social distancing. They give homework and when they come back for a visit the following week, they check up on homework.

There is no online or remote learning because the students do not have access to good enough smartphones and there is no good WiFi or data access in these villages.

Some groups are trying to do remote education with radio and TV but that also does not work well because students are not used to self study and the parents are not equipped to guide the students.

The locals are hopeful that the schools will be able to resume more or less regular schedule operation after the Dashain and Tihar festivals around mid November. The schools will maintain social distancing and plan to provide hand sanitizers for safety.

Likely there will be no regular exam this year. Because of the limited study the students have been able to do and the end of the academic year approaching in a few months, most likely students will be promoted to the next grade based on internal assessments instead of formal exams.

During the last year, one of our students, Manoj, completed grade 12. This is a major milestone completed by this student and we want to extend our congratulations.

Students are enrolled in classes but the classes are not regular. To make social distancing possible, the schools run on "alternate" schedule. In this schedule, grades 6, 7, 8 come to school from 10am to 1pm and grades 9 and 10 from 1pm to 4pm. Alternate schedule is used sporadically but shut down when there are COVID19 cases. Schools have run a total of a few weeks with alternate schedule and it has not been very effective.

When the schools are not running in alternate schedule, teachers visit the homes or the neighborhoods approximately once a week and collect a few students in open public places or front yards and assign homework and in the later visits they will check if the homework has been done. The students are not used to self-study so this has not been too effective but better than no education at all.

Online and remote classes are not effective in this area because the students cannot afford smartphones good enough for videos and they have limited data access on their phones.

Overall, in rural areas, schooling is extremely challenging in the pandemic area because none of the remote education methods work well because we are not used to them and are not well-resourced. After the festivals in about two weeks, Mr. Baral and the volunteers are hopeful that the schools will be able to run according to alternate schedule a little more frequently than they have been in the past.

The schools tried to run online classes. Some students were able to utilize that format but not many. We also tried to send printouts of some materials to students at their homes in case they don’t have appropriate devices or data access.

There was limited success running classes with social distancing but there is a plan to try that after Tihar festival. The students would be divided into cohorts and they would be invited to schools. The municipality will meet soon to decide on this mechanism and if it is approved, we are hopeful the education will continue in a somewhat normal manner.

The government has said it is not planning to alter the academic year calendar so there will likely be exams on time (around March/April 2021) but the exams may be done differently and fewer topics would be covered.