By Jane Clarkson
Adarsha Janapremee School is a family run school that is about half an hour away from Kathmandu. It’s a fairly typical example of Nepali education and has kids aged from 3 to 19. The school is a private school, which means that the families pay for their children to go to the school, however, don’t expect rich kids. Many of the families scrimp and save in order to send their children to schools like this and many of the kids have scholarships. These are either in the form of donations from charities, sponsorship from old volunteers or through educational achievement. The kids have exams every year and the child that does the best in each class has their fees paid for them in that year.
The school is English speaking and all of their lessons except of course Nepali are conducted by English speaking teachers. However, the volunteers are vital in improving the children’s grasp of English because the English they are taught is often very unrealistic. Also volunteers in the school help the children to learn in different ways and can encourage them to move away from just memorising stories and being dictated to from out of date and politically incorrect books.
The classes like in most Nepali schools are very big and within the classroom facilities are limited. This is why we encourage the use of more imaginative lessons to make school more enjoyable for the children. You can expect a class of at least 40 children in a room about 2m squared! Certainly a challenge. However, as frightening as this sounds it is not as intimidating as you may expect. The kids are so enthusiastic about their work and having you there that it is such as enjoyable experience.
Whilst at Janapremee you live with the family that run the school. You have your own bedroom but you do everything with the family. This includes eating real Nepali foods, join in festival celebrations, meeting and spending time with every member of their extended family and friends in the family (the rest of the town). You will hardly ever have any time to do nothing, as it’s a very busy household. Even if there is a strike and you can’t go visiting one of the many amazing sights in the area, you still have so much to do with the family.
If you want to experience the Nepali lifestyle first hand and want to work in a school that will give you a taste of what typical Nepali education is like then Janapremee is the school for you.