Various stakeholders and interest groups have again intensified their lobbying to include provisions favourable for them in the School Education Bill—even though it had already been endorsed by the respective thematic committee of the House of Representatives. The House committee passed the bill and forwarded it to the plenary of the lower house last month, nearly two years after it was registered in the legislature. But various interest groups such as the school owners’ organisations—PABSON, N-PABSON, and HISSAN—and the teachers’ federation have for long been mounting pressure, through protests and lobbying.

They have expressed reservations over some provisions in the bill. Additionally, over a dozen student organisations including the student wings of the ruling parties—the CPN-UML and the Nepali Congress—have announced protest programmes raising some demands that are contradictory to the stances taken by the teachers and school owners. Parliament’s Education, Health and Information Technology Committee, based on rigorous deliberations on the bill, has addressed many of the issues raised by teachers’ federation and school operators. Still unhappy, the agitating teachers have intensified their lobbying to tweak still more provisions. They staged sit-ins at the offices of major political parties last month. The school owners’ organisations lined up their vehicles on the valley’s roads on Monday. There have been threats even to shut down the schools.

It is the stakeholders’ right to be aware of laws that can directly impact them. They can lobby if proposed provisions are detrimental to their profession and business. And their valid concerns should be heard and addressed by lawmakers and policymakers. The House committee, before finalising the draft, had held months-long discussions on the bill’s content. In the course, it addressed a number of issues raised by the stakeholders. But the school owners want to remove provisions such as those that require schools to provide scholarships to a certain number of students and for private schools to gradually convert into nonprofits. The committee, however, looks to have taken a practical approach in line with the Free and Compulsory Education Act. The Act says that schools with up to 500 students are required to provide full scholarships to 10 percent of their students. For those with up to 800 students, the requirement increases to 12 percent, and for schools with more than 800 students, it goes up to 15 percent. Likewise, the bill’s provision to recruit 60 percent teachers through internal competition and 40 percent through open doesn’t sound impractical.

The agitating teachers, school owners and student organisations should not stick to impractical demands, and particularly refrain from shutting down schools and depriving students of regular study. Yes, members of Parliament must listen to the stakeholders’ genuine concerns. Yet they also cannot be swayed by the impractical demands of interest and lobbying groups, and thus go against the letter and spirit of the constitution. The statute guarantees every citizen’s right to compulsory and free education up to the basic level and free education up to the secondary level. Of late, there has been a trend of unions and professional organisations—be they related to doctors, engineers, teachers or even civil servants—creating unwarranted pressure on lawmakers and at times even dictating lawmaking. Lawmakers must hold their ground.