A Multilevel Approach to address Diversity in the Nepalese Educational System (Preparatory Funding)

The project “A Multilevel Approach to address Diversity in Nepalese Educational System” focuses on issues that are directly or indirectly addressed by the governmentally planning and implementation of a comprehensive school sector reform programme (since 2009 onwards) and educational development. (Details see C.7.) Regarding the diversity of Nepal´s population and the amount of marginalised groups and minorities, the educational system has to cover and include highly heterogeneous pupils and teachers. Embedded in this context the introduced project joins two different fields of action: First: The joint development of a research proposal and research and furthermore the realisation of the research project in Kathmandu with the aims to identify differences regarding the educational success of pupils (schools, colleges), who are born and raised in urban areas and pupils who migrated from rural regions in urban centres. If such differences can be proved, further data collection can concentrate on possible influencing factors, like, language, gender, the socio-economic background, place of origin and also different understanding of the school-system, education and learning of the parents and pupils. Furthermore the methodological approaches of migration and integration and urban and rural research in Nepal shall be intensively discussed in several methodological workshops of the research team. Experts on different issues are invited to present their methodological approaches to combine and adapt for research in the setting of Nepal. In a second step the gained knowledge will be integrated in the development of a Certified Program, which shall be part of chosen Master-courses of the Faculty of Education/Tribhuvan University. The content of the Certified Program concentrates on the issues of national and international migration, consequences for and connections to the educational system, influencing factors for the education access and success from pupils with different origin, the impact on the labour market, migration and health combined with public health promotion as well as the embedment in the societal context. Finally research results can be used for the development of options for action and strategies. The generated knowledge shall be disseminated by a publication and conference on migration in Kathmandu.