I still remember March-April 2020 when the bustling schools and colleges near my neighborhood fell silent. The government had announced that all schools and colleges would close to curb the spread of COVID-19. Nearly nine million Nepali students suddenly found themselves at home, uncertain when they would return to their classrooms, probably happy initially for the breaks they had been longing for their whole life.
As a lifelong resident Kathmandu, I had seen schools shut briefly during past crises: when the king was overthrown, the 2015 earthquake, and political strikes, but never on a nationwide scale and for an indefinite length of time, and together with the entire world. In the days that followed, an eerie quiet settled over schoolyards, and a pressing question loomed in every household, especially in teachers’ minds, about how the learning might continue.
A Nation Scrambles to Go Digital
Almost overnight, Nepal attempted an educational transformation that would normally take years. Teachers, administrators, and families scrambled to move learning from blackboards to digital screens, and in cities like Kathmandu and Pokhara, some private schools quickly launched online classes via Zoom, Microsoft Teams, or Google Meet. We would be allowed to go out in set time and when we did, we could see neighbors’ children on their tablets with their teacher on the other end lecturing via. a group call. Covid lockdown was something we had never seen before, but its effects weren’t familiar on a large scale either.
At the same time, national and local authorities rolled out alternative learning plans: televised lessons on Nepal Television, radio classes on community FM stations, and distribution of self-learning worksheets for those with neither internet nor TV. Despite these efforts, the reach of remote learning was very limited. A survey by UNICEF in mid-2020 found that more than two-thirds of Nepali schoolchildren were unable to access any distance learning at all, and only about 3 in 10 children had the tools at home – be it a television, radio or internet – to tune into remote lessons. The remainder, especially in rural villages and low-income urban households, were essentially cut off when schools closed. This stark digital divide meant that some students were logging into virtual classrooms, whereas many others were left behind.
In 2019, only 12% of public schools in Nepal had internet connectivity or the capacity for any form of ICT-based learning, which puts a heavy highlight into Nepal’s existing gaps in technology and infrastructure. Even owning a smartphone or computer was a luxury for many families. The government’s ambitious “Alternative Learning” plan that encouraged online classes, radio, and TV schooling ran into a harsh reality when countless students didn’t have devices, electricity was unreliable in parts of the country, and internet data could be prohibitively expensive. The Ministry of Education issued directives and guides for remote learning, for obvious reasons, it did not magically ensure that students had TV sets, smartphones, or internet access, nor did it adequately train teachers for online teaching.
As the weeks of school closures turned into months, the digital divide in Nepal became impossible to ignore in the midst of being afraid of getting the virus or not getting the vaccine. Not only in rural areas but also within Kathmandu Valley were stark contrasts observed. In some private schools, attendance in online classes was high (in one district, over 80% of private school students were online) while in nearby government schools, less than half the students could join virtual classes. Outside the cities, the numbers were often far worse. A survey in a western Tarai town showed only 6% of government school students had WiFi at home, and barely 21% owned a radio to follow the FM broadcasts. In mountainous provinces like Karnali, countless children had no internet, no television, and in some cases no radio signal either.
Sitting in my home in Kathmandu, scrolling through news updates, I found myself taken aback by some reports and was a jarring reminder that ‘online education’ was a huge privilege in our country. Poorer students, rural students, and those in remote hills were disproportionately cut off from learning opportunities.
Teachers Becoming Students of Technology
Regardless of the educational state of the nation, the plight and perseverance of teachers were undeniable. Overnight, educators were expected to master digital tools that they had never used before, and getting an imposter syndrome after years of teaching to feel like a beginner again in area you never needed to explore was a massive burdain. Across Nepal, educators had to quickly familiarise themselves with laptops, smartphones, and new software to keep lessons going.
In the early days of lockdown, teachers were “terrified of touching the computer” in case they broke something, and had never used anything beyond Facebook on their smartphone. Yet, within a month, they were recording video lessons and sharing them through Viber and Whatsapp groups. Such stories were common. Teachers called one another for help, younger teachers mentored senior ones in using Zoom, and informal training sessions popped up everywhere. One headline in the newspaper read, “Teachers trade chalk for mouse clicks,” which perfectly captured the moment.
Teaching something as inherently human and discussion-based as poetry through a screen felt foreign at first, like trying to sing through a walkie-talkie, which the teachers did do! Yet, with patience and a few helpful nudges from her students, they got the hang of it. Across Nepal, thousands of teachers who had never touched a projector or used email regularly were suddenly running virtual classrooms, teaching moral education, social studies and reciting “Saiyau Thunga Phula Ka Hami”. That quiet, collective determination to keep teaching, no matter the medium, was perhaps one of the most underappreciated triumphs of the lockdown era.
In some schools, senior teachers leaned on their students (or their own children at home) to teach them how to navigate apps and fix microphone issues during live classes. The humility and, at the same time, slight annoyance, involved in this process were heartening. Teachers who had spent decades in physical classrooms were now reinventing their teaching methods on the fly as they experimented with posting homework in whatever tool their school decided to use, gave feedback via voice messages, and coordinated with each other through WhatsApp groups. And my mother, who has taught for over 30 years, had to go through all of this. Surely, not every experiment worked, and there definitely were plenty of awkward moments, like teachers accidentally leaving the call, or not realizing they were on mute, or not realizing they were not on mute, but everyone understood that this was a learning journey for the educators as well.
Looking across the country, I feel that these educators’ adaptability was a cornerstone of Nepal’s pandemic response in education. It was the teachers’ time to go went well beyond their comfort zones to engage students and so they did. By early-mid 2021, some schools in Kathmandu cautiously reopened with masks and distancing, only to close again during subsequent COVID-19 waves but it wasn’t until late 2021 that children in many regions returned to their classrooms full-time. I reflect on those two years of disrupted schooling, I am struck by how much learning happened for students, for teachers, parents, and the education system as a whole into something like we would never imagine. Nepal effectively went through a crash-course in digital education. We learned about our infrastructure shortcomings, but also about our collective resourcefulness.
On one hand, the pandemic laid bare the inequities but we cannot forget that a majority of Nepali students fell behind due to lack of access. There are already reports of increased dropouts in rural areas and learning losses that could take years to remedy on top of the psychological toll on children who were isolated from peers is another invisible challenge.
On the other hand, there is a sense of optimism in the new skills and tools gained. Many teachers who were dragged into using technology have kept some of those practices even after returning to physical classrooms. Perhaps the greatest takeaway from this period is a renewed appreciation for the role of teachers and community in education. I definitely observed how education truly became everyone’s business during the pandemic in one way or another. It was an all-hands-on-deck moment. Nepal logged in – to the internet and to the idea that learning can happen beyond school walls if we support each other.
