21st century

School education of 21st
century and its necessity in Nepal
-Tolnath Kafle
Itahari
Introduction
Education is at the heart of humanistic development. The goals of future-oriented education are
defined by the development process as the collective vision of the society. Education as knowledge is one
of the creative elements in the formation of that collective vision, and is also one of the important means
for realizing the agenda of human ascent from the shadows out. Developmental transformation occurs
when, and not before, there is a confluence of constructive socio-economic factors, the knowledge base,
the engagement of human resources and a fundamental revolution of values. The development process
then becomes a holistic structure and no factor in it — economic cultural, social or intellectual — can be
understood except in relation to the Education for the twenty-first century whole. Education has a
catalytic role in each of the elements as well as in the development process as a whole. ‘Historically, the
assessment of cognitive and social competencies and attributes has relied on different approaches. The
cognitive has been predominately based on correct versus incorrect answers, whereas the social has relied
on self-report estimates. The emergence of interest in skills that are no longer defined uniquely within one
of the spheres provokes query about whether they can be assessed in a common way’ (Care et al., 2016, p.
262).
With the evolution of society, there was development of teaching to unknown people by known ones so
as to satisfy the social, economic and cultural responsibilities of human being. And, the very acceptance
of learning process was considered as education. In some hard experiences and circumstances, the
solutions developed by human were the beginning situation of education.
Modern education is called as a continued process to bring out talents of human being. This begins from
cradle and ends in tomb. Among three sorts education namely- formal education, informal education and
non-formal or irregular education- the education with school structure and certificate is known as formal
education. With the evolution of human civilization, educational institutions are being established so as to
satisfy daily needs and to have effective learning. If we are to look at the educational history in the world,
there were establishment of formal educational institutions in Indian Sub-Continent to teach Sanskrit and
Pali languages. Nalanda and Takshyashila are considered as ancient center of education in Indian Sub-
Continent. Likewise, the empire of the education system based on gradual development was flourished
since 18th
century. In Nepal, Brahmins run some Gurkul to impart education to their children. However,
they were not formally registered. In this context, the English-medium school established in the Dakh
square of Thapathali palace in 1910 BS, is considered as the first formal education in Nepal. In the initial
phase of the English-medium school established in Thapathali palace, teachers and curriculum were
supported by East IndiaCompany. It was run until 2028 BS.The Education Commission in 2028 BS,
formally decided that the educational structure, curriculum, objectives and subjects of all schools in the
nation must be same. This year can be called as the establishment of modern educational system in Nepal.

In this way, Nepal's crystal clear framework of formal education was sketched in 20th
centure only.
Therefore, we mustn't be pessimistic on achievements we have received so far.
Current educational situation in Nepal
If we are to look at the current educational system in Nepal, we find two classes of people receiving
different education in different educational structures. Children of elites are enjoying high-end
institutional and residential private school education. Children of economically lower class families are
studying in government-run community school in Nepal. Not all institutional and residential private
schools are well-equipped. In the same manner, community schools are also of different types as per the
management committee and diversities of head teacher and teachers. School in Nepal are of types
including pre-primacy, school running classes of 1 to 5, 1 to 8, 1 to 12 and 11 and 12.
The situation of distribution of school structure
According to the flash report of 2074 BS by Minister of Education, following is the situation of
distribution of school education in Nepal:
01. In ECD
- Private School: 6120
- Community School: 30448
- Students: 958127
- Teachers: 51490
02. From Class 1 to 5
- Students: 3312062 (community), 657954 (private)
- Teachers: 151889 (community), 50227 (private)
03. From class 6 to 8
04. From Class 9 to 10
05. From class 11 to 12

Schools run as community and private or institutional school
- Pre-primary classes: 36568
- Elementary School from class 1 to 5: 35211
- From class 6 to 8: 20632
- School running technical education in class 9 and 10: 283
- School running technical education: 724
There are 1121 school run as per religious lines. Following is their distribution:
- Madarsha : 907
- Gumbas: 114
- Gurukul: 121
In such schools, 8349351 students are studying and they are being taught by some 376979 teachers.
According to fiscal budget of 2074/75 BS, A total of 10 percent national budget is allocated in education
sector.
After looking educational statistics above, we can say that Nepal have plenty of workforce, means and
resources and optimistic presence of students in schools. However, it is heard that the education in Nepal
is not as expected and suitable for the soil of the nation. The employment-seeking youths flying abroad
every year proves this. Even those employed in teaching-learning are not satisfied with their profession.
This shows that Nepal doesn't have educational supply as per demands.
What it means to education in 21st
century and what must be its structure?
The process of development of right skills to our children to be assimilated in the changing world can be
considered as education in 21st
century. The major aim of today's education is to develop skilled
manpower by utilizing advanced technologies and accepting social norms, values and beliefs. A 21st
century education is about giving students the skills they need to succeed in this new world, and helping
them grow the confidence to practice those skills. With so much information readily available to them,
21st century skills focus more on making sense of that information, sharing and using it in smart ways.
The coalition P21 (Partnership for 21st Century Learning) has identified four ‘Skills for Today’:
 Creativity
 Critical thinking
 Communication
 Collaboration

These four themes are not to be understood as units or even subjects, but as themes that should be
overlaid across all curriculum mapping and strategic planning. They should be part of every lesson in the
same way as literacy and numeracy.
Creativity is about thinking through information in new ways, making new connections and coming up
with innovative solutions to problems. Critical thinking is about analysing information and critiquing
claims. Communication is understanding things well enough to share them clearly with other people.
Collaboration is about teamwork and the collective genius of a group that is more than the sum of its
parts.
There are other skills that are important, which fall within these four areas. Entrepreneurship can be
considered a skill of its own. Inquiry and problem solving are key. Emotional intelligence (EQ) is one of
the most important keys to successfulwork and relationships. The bottom line? Education needs to be all
about empowering students with transferable skills that will hold up to a rapidly changing world, not
prescribed content that has been chosen for its past relevance.
In fact, today's education must be centered on following subjects:
- To work in group and to develop skills of group communication
- Analytical thinking and problem-solving skills
- Written and verbal communication
- Utilization of information technology and timely learning
- Capacity to accept global issues
- Development of research capabilities and capacity to discover new areas of employment
- C4 i.e. creation, critical thinking, collaboration and cooperation
In order to develop above mentioned areas, the learning skills, teaching techniques and needs of
teachers must be as follows:
Areas of learning
Traditional education is based on subjective knowledge development. The relevance of the traditional
education, which stresses more on traditional language, mathematics, science, art and social sectors,
has almost ended. In today's world, we need to have need-based learning opportunities as per
contemporary needs of our society. It is required to impart education on same age-group students
identifying needs of our society. There is urgency of following learning skills to assimilate in the
changing context of the globe:
Civic Literacy

Civic literary speaks to the need for students to be able to understand and influence civic decision
making. Civil literacy includes skills to inform and update students about governmental rules, laws,
rights and duties as per their level as follows:
- Global awareness
- Economic literacy
- Awareness about health
- Environmental awareness
- Awareness on leadership skills
Methods of Teaching
- Analytical thinking and use of problem solving methods
- To develop learning by doing methods and to accept creative and innovative thinking as major
methods of teaching
- Learning opportunities by taking leadership and responsibility
- Knowledge on productive and certain specific area
- Development of literacy about communication information by using technology
- Learning based on games and sports
- Project-based learning
- Stress on problem-centered learning
Methods of evaluation
Evaluation is known as a process to identify learning behavior of learners and to describe appropriate and
inappropriate situations of the learning behaviors. Following are the bases of student evaluation
identifying knowledge, understanding and practices:
- Evaluation based on multiple process
- Identification of subject-based expertise
- Pre information on areas of learning sectors
- Formulation of plans on evaluation
- Project-based evaluation
- Internationally accepted bases of evaluation
- Uses of records methods
Role of teacher
According to Trilling and Fadel (2009), students are informed on subject matters themselves and teacher
just has the role to assist. Teacher just has to aware about contemporary subjects with the use of
technology. For this, the teacher must have following skills:
- Practical skills
- Use of technology and management skills
- Skills of creation, conduction and implementation of projects
- Participation in research-based activities
- Team teaching skills

- Bridging subjects, students and circumstances
- To be creative and active in researches
- Good model
- Capacity to identify group problems and their solutions
Asian society of education describe following teaching techniques are appropriate in 21st century .
 Make it relevant
To be effective, any curriculum must be relevant to students’ lives. Transmission and rote memorization
of factualknowledge can make any subject matter seem irrelevant. Irrelevance leads to lack of
motivation, which in turn leads to decreased learning.
To make curriculum relevant, teachers need to begin with generative topics, ones that have an important
place in the disciplinary or interdisciplinary study at hand and resonate with learners and teachers.
Both teachers and students benefit from the use of generative topics and reinforcement of relevance.
Teachers like this method because it allows for the freedom to teach creatively. Students like it because it
makes learning feel more interesting and engaging, and they find that understanding is something they
can use, rather than simply possess.
 Teach through the disciplines
Learning through disciplines entails learning not only the knowledge of the discipline but also the skills
associated with the production of knowledge within the discipline. Through disciplinary curriculum and
instruction students should learn why the discipline is important, how experts create new knowledge, and
how they communicate about it.
Continued learning in any discipline requires that the student—or expert—become deeply familiar with a
knowledge base,know how to use that knowledge base,articulate a problem, creatively address the
problem, and communicate findings in sophisticated ways. Therefore, mastering a discipline means using
many 21st century skills.
 Simultaneously develop lower and higher order thinking skills
Lower-order exercises are fairly common in existing curricula, while higher-order thinking activities are
much less common. Higher-level thinking tends to be difficult for students because it requires them not
only to understand the relationship between different variables (lower-order thinking) but also how to
apply—or transfer—that understanding to a new, uncharted context (higher-order thinking).
Transfer (which we will discuss in more detail below), tends to be very difficult for most people.
However,applying new understandings to a new, uncharted context is also exactly what students need to
do to successfully negotiate the demands of the 21st century.
Higher-level thinking skills take time to develop, and teaching them generally requires a tradeoff of
breadth for depth.
 Encourage transfer of learning

Students must apply the skills and knowledge they gain in one discipline to another. They must also apply
what they learn in school to other areas of their lives. This application—or transfer—can be challenging
for students (and for adults as well).
There are a number of specific ways that teachers can encourage low- and high-road transfer.46 To
encourage low-road transfer,teachers can use methods like the following:
 Design learning experiences that are similar to situations where the students might need to apply
the knowledge and skills
 Set expectations, by telling students that they will need to structure their historical argument
homework essay in the same way that they are practicing in class
 Ask students to practice debating a topic privately in pairs before holding a large-scale debate in
front of the class
 Organize mock trials, mock congressional deliberations, or other role-playing exercises as a way
for students to practice civic engagement
 Talk through solving a particular mathematics problem so that students understand the thinking
process they might apply to a similar problem
 Practice finding and using historical evidence from a primary source and then askstudents to do
the same with a different primary source
The purpose of each of these activities is to develop students’ familiarity and comfort with a learning
situation that is very similar to a new learning situation to which they will need to transfer their skills,
concepts, etc.
Teachers can use other methods to encourage high-road transfer. For example teachers can ask students
to:
 brainstorm about ways in which they might apply a particular skill, attitude, concept, etc. to
another situation
 generalize broad principles from a specific piece of information, such as a law of science or a
political action
 make analogies between a topic and something different, like between ecosystems and financial
markets
 study the same problem at home and at school, to practice drawing parallels between contextual
similarities and differences
Shanghai education experts believe that training students to transfer their knowledge and skills to real
problems contributed to their success on the 2009 Programme for International Student Assessment
(PISA). The importance of transfer brings us back to the fundamental rationale for learning 21st century
skills in the first place—so that students can transfer them to the economic, civic and global 21st century
contexts that demand them.
 Teach students to learn how to learn
There is a limit to the skills, attitudes, and dispositions that students can learn through formal schooling.
Therefore,educating them for the 21st century requires teaching them how to learn on their own. To do
so, students need to be aware of how they learn.
Teachers can develop students’ metacognitive capacity by encouraging them to explicitly examine how
they think. it is also important for students to develop positive mental models about how we learn, the

limits of our learning, and indications of failure. Students benefit from believing that intelligence and
capacity increase with effort (known as the “incremental” model of intelligence) and that mistakes and
failures are opportunities for self-inquiry and growth rather than indictments of worth or ability.
 Address misunderstandings directly
Another well-documented science-of-learning theory is that learners have many misunderstandings about
how the world really works, and they hold onto these misconceptions until they have the opportunity to
build alternative explanations based on experience. To overcome misconceptions, learners of any age
need to actively construct new understandings.
There are severalways to counter misunderstandings, including teaching generative topics deeply,
encouraging students to model concepts, and providing explicit instruction about misunderstandings.
 Promote teamwork as a process and outcome
Students learn better with peers. There are many ways in which teachers can design instruction to
promote learning with others.
Students can discuss concepts in pairs or groups and share what they understand with the rest of the class.
They can develop arguments and debate them. They can role-play. They can divide up materials about a
given topic and then teach others about their piece. Together, students and the teacher can use a studio
format in which several students work through a given issue, talking through their thinking process while
the others comment.
 Make full use of technology to support learning
Technology offers the potential to provide students with new ways to develop their problem solving,
critical thinking, and communication skills, transfer them to different contexts, reflect on their thinking
and that of their peers,practice addressing their misunderstandings, and collaborate with peers—all on
topics relevant to their lives and using engaging tools.
There are also many other examples of web-based forums through which students and their peers from
around the world can interact, share, debate,and learn from each other.
The nature of the Internet’s countless sources, many of which provide inconsistent information and
contribute substantive source bias, provide students with the opportunity to learn to assess sources for
their reliability and validity. It gives them an opportunity to practice filtering out information from
unreliable sources and synthesizing information from legitimate ones.
 Foster students’ creativity
A common definition of creativity is “the cognitive ability to produce novel and valuable ideas.”
Creativity is prized in the economic, civic, and global spheres because it sparks innovations that can
create jobs, address challenges, and motivate social and individual progress. Like intelligence and
learning capacity, creativity is not a fixed characteristic that people either have or do not have. Rather, it
is incremental, such that students can learn to be more creative. In contrast to the common misconception
that the way to develop creativity is through uncontrolled, let-the kids-run-wild techniques—or only

through the arts—creative development requires structure and intentionality from both teachers and
students and can be learned through the disciplines.
Contemporary challenges of Nepal's school education:
With the development of time, we are in 21st
century. In fact, this is the era of science and technology.
Every person in this era must be equipped with technology. Learning techniques, teaching methods,
teacher's role and evaluation methods of 21st
century have not entered in our schools. In terms of paper
works, our education system and structure may seem to be strong given government's formulation of
national educational goals, educational plans on sustainable development and various international
accords signed. However, this is not the reality in our classrooms. In summary, following are the major
problems in our educational system:
- Division of school based on economic class. There are different schools for different economic
background.
- Community schools are equipped with skilled manpower and physical as well as economic
resources. However, their management is politicalized.
- Institutional schools are more concerned on benefits
- Institutional schools are not focused on teaching based on child psychology. They are more
concerned on cheap popularity like installing CC TV Camera in classroom.
- Trained teachers don't put their training techniques in classroom.
- Professional training is not included in profession. The way a trained solider
applies his training in army but training teacher doesn't.
- Lack of efficient implementation of curriculum and lack of local curriculum in classroom.
- Teachers are more concerned on politics than their professionalism.
- No use of technology in teaching learning process. Even useful technology are ignored like 3M
i.e. Motorcycle, mobile and mini skirt.
- No use of reference materials and self-studying materials
- No entry of innovative teaching technology like micro teaching program instruction, small group
teaching, behavior modification techniques etc.
- Evaluation based on traditional values
- No standard on measuring capacities of skilled manpower
- Lack of physical infrastructure to teach students by games and sports
- Lack of stated physical structure. For example, government has made provision of 100 square
meters of playground and 0.75 square meters of classroom space for a student in primacy school.
This is not seen in many schools.
- Lack of subject-based skills among teachers of community and institutional private schools.
- Teaching is limited just as speaking in front of classroom.
- Despite the provision of preventive and curative evaluation system, it is not implemented.
- More stress on exam-centric learning process
- There are life-changing and vocational learning materials. However, these are also taken as other
ordinary tools.
- Teaching is not regarded as profession but as a wait for better option.
Summary:

If we are to throw our weights on eradicating all problems surfaced in education sector, it is not
impossible to develop education as per the requirements of the contemporary world. In order to manage
advanced and 21st
century friendly education system, we need to do following things:
- There is urgency to end double-standard in same education system
- School education must be free of political interference and this must be developed as an
independent sector.
- Guardian education must be indispensible.
- Crystal clear policies on human resources must be formulated in nation level.
- Specific areas of employment must be pointed for skilled manpower and they must be selected in
transparent manner.
- Teacher postings in pretexts of better educational system must be ended.
- All schools, teachers, students and guardians must be technology-friendly.
- Teaching mustn't be made an employment area just after agitation and protests.
- There must be provision of capacity-based opportunities
- Stress on learning by doing techniques
- Stress on group works
- Development of learners' friendly school structure, classrooms, learning materials and teachers
- Development of democratic teaching techniques
Reference Materials
- Mathews J. The rush for "21st century skills "; New buzz phrase draws mixed interpretation from
educators The Washington Post 2009 January 5:B2.
- Trilling and Fadel(2009).21st century learning skills. San Francisco, CA: John Wiley and sons.
- Ministry of Education Nepal Education in Figures 2017 (At A Glance)
- Raja Roy Singh (1991) education for the twenty-first century : Asia pacific Perspective.

21st century

Recommended

Recommended

More Related Content

What's hot

What's hot (20)

Similar to 21st century

Similar to 21st century (20)

Recently uploaded

Recently uploaded (20)

21st century