1. CONTEXTUALIZING EDUCATION SECTOR 1.1. A Brief History Education in Nepal officially started when the then ruling Rana family established the first modern school - Durbar High School 1 in 1853 AD. It was essentially meant to cater to the elite members of the Rana regime. On the other hand, the remainder of the population relied on homeschooling and gurukuls for their education 2. Until the 1950s, education remained an exclusive privilege for the wealthy elites with less than 1 percent of the population attending schools, which was reflected in the then literacy rate that stood at a mere 5 percent. Similarly, the country did not have any universities at the time and only had a few hundred schools in existence. It was only after the downfall of the Rana regime that the access to formal education started expanding.3 Post-1950s, the education sector witnessed transformations post democratization which resulted in education reaching a larger mass. It was only then that a uniform contemporary education system was introduced to the public. Up until 1971, the education sector in Nepal was mostly nationalized. Reforms such as the National Education System Plan (NESP) were introduced in 1971, which paved the way for a more modern and egalitarian education system that focused on compulsory public basic education. Under the NESP, all community-run schools were brought under the national bracket. The plan also started providing government assistance to existing private schools4. The reform attempted to create a unified system of public education to empower District Education Offices (DEOs) to run schools. However, School Management Committees (SMCs) were not included in this system, further limiting the benefits of such platforms to selected elite groups. The first private school established in Nepal was Adarsh Vidya Mandir in 1966 AD 5. Prior to the nationalization of all schools by NESP in 1971, private schools were already in operation. There were two types of private schools, both of which ran under the motive of ‘not-for-profit’- either government-aided or unaided. The seventh amendment to the
THE WORLD OF PRIVATE SCHOOL CARTELS
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