Collaborative Schools Network

This week gave a good snapshot of the backgrounds of many of our students. Here’s a summary: One of our students, a girl aged about 11, did not return to school after the holidays. She’s a domestic worker for a family who live in a big house not far from our school. So we called … Continue reading 11 years old and trapped in domestic service – stories of our students

Changing a school requires a lot of challenging conversations, often involving the whole staff. But if the staff don’t know how to conduct a meeting properly, it’s impossible to have those conversations. So many of our meetings have been dominated by a few loud voices, no one took turns and the female teachers in particular … Continue reading Murder Hunt!

I’ve always said the task of improving government schools is to change teachers’ skill and will. Building their teaching skills is do-able, but the big battle is the will – changing their mindset (and in fact even changing their skills is dependent on changing their mindset). Now, many government schools (and even some private ones) close … Continue reading It’s a mindset thing

Kathmandu is struggling to cope with a blockade of its border posts with India, which has stopped petrol, cooking gas and other vital supplies from reaching the city. Our cooking gas ran out last week and so we’ve been getting by on biscuits for lunch. Yesterday however our wonderful cooks/cleaners decided enough was enough and … Continue reading No gas – no worries!

We have been closed for 7 of the last 10 school days for various public holidays. How can we, or any other government school in the city, make progress like this? Public holiday School holiday Public holiday Public holiday Public holiday School day School day School day Public holiday Public holiday

The Ministry of Education asked us to share some of the things were are doing well at Jana Uddhar. Here’s a list of 12 things that are making a difference: We have introduced a teacher improvement cycle, which includes regular training, observations and feedback. We have prioritised 3 areas for teacher improvement a) teaching students … Continue reading 12 things that are making a difference