Mahendra School in Dadeldhura sees high admission demand

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By Pushkar Bhandari,Dadeldhura, May 20: Student pressure at Mahendra Secondary School in Khalanga, the district headquarters of Dadeldhura, has been high. The number of students enrolled in the high school located in Amargadhi Municipality-5 had exceeded 1,200 so far. 

Even the private schools of the district headquarters do not have such a high number of students.  Three private schools are in operation at the district headquarters, but each of them has only about 700 students. 

Mahendra Secondary School, established in 1957, had enrolled the highest number of students so far.  According to Headmaster Surendra Ayer, admitting all students willing to read in their school was impossible in the lack of physical infrastructure. 

It has been five years since the school began teaching students in English medium. Likewise, English is a compulsory subject from Class I to IV while both  Nepali and English are taught from Grade VI to X.

Likewise, the school is running a course in civil engineering from Grade IX to XII under the technical stream. 

The school that had brought one school bus in use last year, has added one more bus this year to ferry the students. 

According to Headmaster Ayer, the number of students surged in the school after it introduced English-medium instruction, buses, and technical subjects. This year, they enrolled 354 new students. 

 He informed that 306 new students from nursery to class IX and 48 students in the engineering course of grade IX were admitted for this academic session.  

The buses ferry about 100 students from Ait Bazar of Amargadhi Municipality-3 and Pokhara Market of Amargadhi-7. 

He informed that due to the lack of necessary infrastructure, they had to stop admitting students. Currently, the school had 21 classrooms. According to Ayer,  based on the students admitted this year, they needed eight extra classrooms. He said that a four-room building is under construction for the required rooms.

According to the officer of the District Education Coordination Committee, Narad Prasad Joshi, the number of public schools in Dadeldhura is 251 while the number of private schools is 40.

 He also said that 71 schools are running classes up to grade 10 and 34 schools up to class 12. There are four model schools in Dadeldhura. But they have not faced the pressure of the students like Mahendra Secondary School. Instead, the number of students has decreased, said Joshi.

 Ugratara High School of Pokhara in Amargadhi Municipality-7, Bhubaneshwari High School of Parashuram Municipality-5, Saraswati High School of Bogota, in Bhageshwar Rural Municipality and Balakalyan High School of Ajaymeru Rural Municipality, Puilek are the model schools. Agriculture science is taught in Saraswati and Balakalyan high schools from Grade IX to XII.  Computer Science is taught as an optional subject in classes XI and XII at Bhubaneswari High School. However, there is no student pressure. 

Bhubaneswari High School is located in the densely populated Inner Madhes region. Dambar Singh Thyal, Headmaster of the school, said that there are currently around 700 students in Bhubaneswar. He informed that 250 new students were admitted to the school this academic session.  However, other model schools have a small number of students. The headmaster of the schools had informed that the number of students was around 415 in Ugratara, 400 in Balakalyani and 350 in Saraswati High School. 

According to Buddhivallabh Joshi, Headmaster of Saraswati High School, the number of students had fallen this year. 

He said that the number of students in the schools of the villages has decreased due to the increase in migration and the parents tend to admit their wards to schools of the urban areas. 

The Education Coordination Office has also mentioned that student enrollment has not increased in other public schools as well.

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