Developing Policy and Planning is an important course to understand the basic concept of policy.
As per the course’s objectives, it will help us to provide advanced knowledge on development planning and policy along with their implications. Every student required the ability to conduct an independent, interdisciplinary, and critical analysis of development planning and policy, which will be delivered through this course when it is learned based on relevant theories and empirical pieces of evidence. So, this course will help us to know a good policy and planning and provide the idea to establish it. This course will also help to observe minutely about the strengths and weaknesses of Nepal’s present and previous policies. My expectation from this course is to improve the analytical skills to find some strengths and shortcomings of any policy. Besides this, I would like to develop the skills which help not only to find the hidden reasons behind the failure of a particular policy but also give concrete suggestions to avoid such loopholes in the future.
I have been hearing the word policy for around 30 years; however, I don’t know the basic steps and strategies to formulate it. Looking at Nepal’s present contest, it seems that the policymakers are more concentrated on the theoretical aspects rather than practical steps. So it has been really hard to incorporate while taking action and implementation. So, the judgement of paperwork is not enough to identify a policy is whether good or bad. If the policy cannot be implemented, it can’t be taken as good policy based on fabricated words and ambitious plans.
The overall objectives of the course are good. Working in educational sectors for about two decades, I have found many loopholes in Nepal’s education policy. Mainly, the government is allocating the maximum budget for the proper management of the community schools. However, the outcome is negligible. On the other hand, Nepal’s government is levied a tax on private schools, who are providing quality education. The teacher of government schools is well paid, although the result is worse; on the contrary, institutional schools’ teachers are less paid or exploited though they have provided better results. In this context, I may have some expectations from this course.
First and foremost, I would like to contribute to Nepal’s government to make better policies in the educational sector so that teachers can feel like an asset to the nation. Besides this, the policymakers should be aware of students’ proper health and sanitation, mental health-related issues, issues about corporal punishments, and bullying. Since my research’s interest area is school bullying, so, at first, I will come forward with some better anti-bullying policies that have to be implemented by all the schools of Nepal. In many countries, the government is showing their accountability by taking school bullying with seriousness and concern; still, in Nepal, it is a new topic (Rana,2008). The issues related to bullying are new in Nepal, so mostly policymakers are not able to see the seriousness of this issue. I am sure that the skills that I have gained from this course will help to make a policy that will help to formulate better education policy.
Reference:
Rana, N. (2008). School Bullying: Peer victimization and How to Deal with it. Hatiban, Lalitpur: Jagadamba Press P. Ltd.