The Ministry of Education, Science and Technology on Friday made public the report of the High-Level National Education Commission more than five years after it was submitted to then-prime minister KP Sharma Oli.

Unveiling the report that Oli and his successors had kept under wraps was one of Sumana Shrestha's priorities as minister for education, science, and technology. Following her request, Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal handed the report to the ministry on Monday.

Shrestha consulted the commission members on Thursday. The ministry stated that the report’s recommendations will be implemented under Dahal’s leadership.

The statement quoted Shrestha as saying, "The government will implement positive and contextual suggestions."

In August 2018, the government formed a 25-member commission led by Education Minister Giriraj Mani Pokharel. It involved education experts, representatives from teachers’ and private schools’ associations, and officials in the task of recommending the government on its education policy.

The commission prepared the report after rigorous discussions and consultations with the stakeholders. On January 15, 2019, it was submitted to Oli.

However, Oli was not interested in implementing the recommendations, so he never made the report public. His successor, Sher Bahadur Deuba, also followed suit.

The commission has recommended that private schools be converted into “trusts” within 10 years. This would, according to the commission, stop the commercialisation of education.

Conversion into trust means that the school owners cannot distribute their profits. Currently, most of the private schools operate as companies after getting registered in the Company Registrar's Office.

The commission, according to its members, made its recommendations based on Article 31(2) of the constitution, which makes the state responsible for ensuring compulsory basic and free secondary education for all. The commission said that leaving private educators to “generate profit”, as they are doing at present, would be tantamount to a breach of the constitution.

The private school operators objected to the provision. They had tried to pressure the commission to exclude it as the report was being finalised.

Usha Jha, a member of the commission, said there was immense pressure from the private schools to keep the report unpublished.

"We worked really hard to prepare the report. All the recommendations aim to improve the country's education system," Jha told the Post. "The education minister took a bold step to make the report public. I believe it gets implemented. In fact, the minister is already following the spirit of the commission's report."

As the Oli government kept the report secret, a majority of members of the committee shared it with the media in December 2020. The National Campaign for Education, an umbrella body of over 400 organisations working in the education sector, had printed the report and distributed it at an event.

However, the report coming out of the ministry holds a different meaning—that the government owns it, said Jha.

The commission recommended that the government facilitate private sector investment in higher education and bring school education gradually under the government’s ambit. It also suggested partnerships between private and public schools to improve the latter’s quality.

Hiring head teachers on contract after evaluating their performance, increasing education budget to at least 20 percent of the government’s spending as per its commitment and ensuring that every child gets basic education in his/her mother tongue are other major recommendations of the commission.

Despite Nepal’s global commitment, the proportion of the national budget allocated to the education sector has been declining. The share of the education budget, which once amounted to 17 percent, is now down to 11 percent.

Allocating at least 20 percent of the national budget, or 6.5 percent of the national GDP, to education is considered the global norm.

Several commissions have been formed to recommend educational reforms over the past decades. However, most of the reports remain unimplemented. The Pokharel-led commission was the sixth formed since 1955 and third after the restoration of democracy in 1950 to look into matters concerning education.