A wrap-Up seminar of the Project for Support for Improvement of School Management Phase II (SISM2) concluded.

“The Project was implemented under the collaboration between Ministry of Education, Science and Technologies (MoESTand Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA).

The primary objective of SISM2 was to manage all community schools nationwide through SIP (School Improvement Plan) process for improving access to and quality of basic education.” “Better School, Better Teaching, and Better Learning” is the line SISM2 has been promoting throughout the Project. MoEST and SISM2 held a Wrap-up Seminar on 11 June 2018 as a dissemination event for sharing the experiences, good practices, lessons learned of the project to further promote the quality education in this country.

Chaired by Joint Secretary of MoEST Baikuntha Prasad Aryal, MoEST Secretary  Khagaraj Baral was chief guest. The event saw attendance of various officials from MoEST, Department of Education including Director General Baburam Poudel, JICA Nepal, other Development partners and representatives from various schools, SMC, local and provincial level governments.

During the event Jun Sakuma, Chief Representative of JICA Nepal stated that “ JICA would like to continuously commit its support to education sector in Nepal as we believe that quality of basic education is not only a key of development and empowerment of each individual but also a corner stone of every development of a nation.”

Major activities of SISM2 included capacity development trainings, national dissemination of SIP formulation, updating, and evaluating of stakeholders at all levels- Regional, District-level, Resource-Center level and support for School-level. During the course the project also produced various training materials and distributed them to all public schools in Nepal.

Community schools in Nepal recognize SIP as the core document for the improvement of school management and ultimately to improve the quality of education. Many schools conduct the workshop to formulate SIP with the participation of stakeholders. The promotion of the SIP is one of the important strategic interventions, as it is stated in School Sector Development Plan (2015/16-2022/23): SIP is a “critical tool for quality improvement at the school level”. In order to attain to this, it is considered that the support to schools from all three layers of government: federal, provincial and local is equally important in the federal system.