Emergency response in educational policies during COVID-19 in Nepal: A critical review

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has brought chaos in education across the world, including developing countries like Nepal. To respond to this educational disruption in this South Asian country, different educational plans and policies were formulated by the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology, Government of Nepal. It is not known whether these policies were realistic and practicable, as there is no review of these documents to date. With this backdrop, this paper critically reviews the educational plans and policies that were developed to manage education during the crisis. It appraises the strengths of these policies in terms of their intent and practicalities of implementation in the given situation, and identifies gaps and challenges, and recommends some ways to realistically run the education system. The review reveals that these documents have several strengths, such as they plan to create data in terms of learners’ access to resources, value self-learning and parent education, and suggest several alternative ways to resume school. Yet, there are some gaps and challenges, the identification of which can guide the effective delivery of education in Nepal in any kind of crisis period both at present and in future. This paper is expected to help policy makers to revisit the existing policies or guide them when they form future educational policies that are designed to manage education in any kinds of crisis. It is also deemed helpful for teacher educators, practitioners and other educational stakeholders to understand about the educational plans and policies formed to deal with crises.