Understanding the SESP · Kathmandu

<aside>

Event notes: Kathmandu Learning Collaborative: Session IV_Understanding the SESP

</aside>

Location: Karkhana Samuha, Lalitpur

</aside>

Presenter: Jimmy Oostrum, UNICEF

</aside>

Date: 4 September 2024, Wednesday

</aside>

1. Agenda Overview

Main Topics Covered:

1. Development of SESP (2022-2032)

2. Detailed Session Summary

Introduction and Objective setting:

The session facilitated by Jimmy Oostrum, Education Specialist, UNICEF discussed the development and implementation of the Education Sector Plan (ESP) in Nepal for the period 2022-2032. The SESP aims to transform the country's education sector by aligning it with Nepal's long-term vision of graduating from a least developed country by 2026 and attaining developed country status by 2043. It incorporates Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 4, which seeks to “ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all” by 2032. The SESP succeeds the five-year School Sector Development Plan (SSDP), which ended in 2021, and has been restructured to fit within the federal governance framework.

Nepal’s SESP was developed in response to several key national and international frameworks:

National Vision: “Prosperous Nepal, Happy Nepali”
Sustainable Development Goals: SDG 4 on education
Free and Compulsory Education Act (2018)
Nepal’s Education Policy (2019)

The plan ensures continuity from the SSDP while adjusting for the new federal context and addressing the challenges of post-COVID education recovery.

Key points included the joint financing approach, where partners commit 10% of the total education budget, totalling one and a half billion rupees. The ESP aims to improve public education quality and restore confidence. It includes strategies for teacher rationalization, skill development, and addressing disparities. The plan also emphasizes the importance of local government involvement and the need for flexible conditional grants. Challenges such as the lack of a comprehensive Education Act and the need for better budget tracking were highlighted. The ESP aims to improve learning outcomes and ensure inclusive education.

Understanding School Education Sector Plan (2021-2030):

SESP Formulation Process

7 Partner Organizations played key roles in the development of the SESP: the Asian Development Bank, European Union, Finland, Norway, UNICEF, USAID and the World Bank.
The development followed a Sector-Wide Approach (SWAp), with a joint financing arrangement covering 10% of the total education budget where the development partners agreed on a number of principles. This approach prevents dependency on external funds while establishing government ownership of the plan. The education budget amounts to 1.5 billion rupees, of which development partners contribute a substantial portion without creating long-term dependency.
The process begins by checking with all partners to ensure their commitment to the new plan. Partners were asked to disclose how much they could contribute, and this collective information was then presented to the government.
The next step would be for the development partners to go to the government to present their unified commitments. The Ministry of Finance is approached first to understand the commitment on what the projection is for education, because the partners need to see if the government commitments and priorities align with theirs for joint contributions. A funding gap needs to be identified otherwise, if the government of Nepal is funding the education fully, the funds of development partners would not make sense. But the gap should be so that it can actually be partly managed by the development partner contributions and in response for that, they get a seat at the table with the government to develop the plan and to have the joint sector reviews.
Every March, there is a forward looking review, where a plan is set together for the next year.
Every November/ December, they have review meetings to review the progress of the last year. It is a budget reviewing joint sector, joint review meeting. This is where CSOs also come in. Once the principles are in place there is an agreement with the Ministry of Finance and agreement among the development partners after which they start working on the plan.
The first thing that they jointly did was take almost eight months to develop a detailed ToR with all the spaces and specific activities that comes under sector analysis mapped out, and details of all the technical assistance required. This would make sure that all the developed plans and priorities come in one framework and that all the indicators negotiated with the government are in one program results framework.
So when it comes to SESP, it is important for SESP to be seen as an operational plan by the MoEST with linkage with all of the other plans and frameworks at the local, provincial and the national level.

Structure:

A Government-led structure to govern, manage and coordinate the development of the SESP, through institutional setup at national level:

ESP Steering Committee, and Technical Committee: It includes mid level technical bureaucrats to disconnect the higher level senior management from the day to day technical management. So the mid level technical bureaucrats who know the strategies, monitoring of the indicators are the ones that really make the plan. This would prevent the committee from being politically influenced. The committee collectively reviews and validates all the plans and moves it to the next phase. The steering committee is part of all major phases: sector analysis, initial preparations and planning, draft of appraisal.
ESP Technical Advisory Team, and Writing Team: The technical advisory team and the writing team are the team that meets every day. They were a joint team of the government and consultant experts.
Technical task team for simulations and projections: The technical task team consisting of a team of accountants and financial experts projects the cost for the fulfillment of the commitments and plans within the 5 year goal and 10 year plans which is in alignment with the baseline data. They are the experts on all of the strategies and all of the activities in the plan and they cost out against the fiscal budget of the government. The adjustments to the targets are done as per the available budget. Then with the Ministry and the fiscal commission all the GDP growth and macro indicators are shown to make sure that an indication of what the government can expect in terms of domestic resources, what is provided in additional resources and what the funding gap will be.
Thematic Consultative Groups; ESP Secretariat: The thematic consultative groups are there because quite often the sector plan has cross cutting sub sectors. There are in total, 14 thematic consultative groups each led by a mid level government official and co-led by a development partner. And all of the groups have development partners, civil society and external experts to ensure diverse perspectives. These groups then take forward their workings to the advisory team for consolidation.

Frequent check-ins with other stakeholders such as National Planning Commission, Ministry of Finance, National Resource Commission, central level ministries, civil societies, National Coalition for Education, teachers are also done. There was a whole stakeholder consultation report where several stakeholders in each of the provinces were undertaken, as well as the academics associations, and the municipality associations.

Nepali was kept as the primary language of the SESP throughout the various drafts, with English translations being provided at various points to ensure engagement and commitment of the international development agencies and allow independent appraisal.

The end stage is building an independent appraisal which is a safety check for the government so that the development partners do not use their positions to force something that the country doesn't need. The appraisal looks at whether the consultations were inclusive and represented diverse actors.

Key imperatives of ESP:

Consideration: When developing a plan with a local or national government, there will be some political agenda, commitments, and the plan needs to correspond to them and be in agreement with their priority. There are politically elected mayors, technical officers, education officers, and they have pressure to achieve and perform. Like with transition to the federal system, they too have education pressure to fulfill. The technical level needs to keep things in stability. Therefore, there is a need to identify joint language with agreement on some common underlying principles regarding why a certain plan is needed.