A week after withdrawing the month-long protest, Nepal Teachers’ Federation has warned of fresh demonstrations, expressing reservations over some provisions in the government’s recently-released policies and programme and suspecting the School Education bill will not address their concerns.

The federation has expressed its reservations particularly on two policies: institutional-community school partnership and harmonisation of the curriculum between the two types of schools.

The 65th point of the government’s policies and programme says a partnership will be established between private and public schools to improve the quality of state-funded schools. The 66th point talks about harmonisation of the curriculum between the two types of schools.

The federation has said that the partnership policy is demeaning to public schools. “By mentioning harmonisation in the curriculum, the education ministry has demonstrated its lack of knowledge about the country’s education system.”

The federation claims both the private and public schools follow the same curriculum as prescribed by the Curriculum Development Centre. But the textbooks are mostly different.

While expressing its reservations over the policies and programme, the federation has also suspected that the teachers’ concerns might not be incorporated in the bill. After discussing it for 35 days, the subcommittee under the Education, Health, and Information Technology Committee of the House of Representatives is revising the bill. It has 10 days to draft and submit the report to the committee.

The federation fears that the final bill might not carry through past agreements reached with the government. The government has sealed four agreements with the teachers, the latest one being on April 30.

The teachers withdrew their month-long protest following the Cabinet decision to address the issues related to their pay and perks and the commitment of the chief whips of the Nepali Congress and CPN-UML.

The federation has warned that if there is any conspiracy or obstruction in promulgation of the School Education Act per the agreements, it will resort to a stern protest. The ruling parties have agreed to get the bill endorsed from the lower house by June 29. It then needs to be endorsed by the National Assembly and receive the presidential seal to come to an effect.

“The federation is continuously monitoring to ensure that a progressive law is passed on time and includes all past agreements,” reads the statement. It has also appealed to all teachers and school employees—permanent, relief quota, former lower secondary teachers, learning grant holders, early childhood educators, temporary and contract-based, special education, technical stream, and institutional school staff—to remain united and active in this cause.

The Act necessary for the full fledged implementation of the federalism has not been promulgated even as around a decade has passed since the Constitution of Nepal came into force. The current bill was registered in the parliament in September 2023.

As many as 161 lawmakers from the ruling and opposition parties have registered 1,758 amendments to the bill. The sub-panel led by Chhabilal Bishwakarma has agreed on most of them.