Learning in Action: SIQAEE Field Insights

On March 11-13, Right4Children conducted field visits to five of the 20 schools we have been supporting  as part of the ongoing SIQAEE Project. SIQAEE, an anagram for ‘School Improvement for Quality Assurance and Enhancement in Education’ (also ‘to learn’ in Nepali), is a project we launched in 2024. Through this initiative, we’ve been working to improve education quality by providing learning facilities, teacher-training, home visits, Early Childhood Development (ECD) enhancements, extracurricular activities (like sports and career guidance), among other things. For more information on this, please visit our SIQAEE page in this website. Many of these techniques have been taken forward from what we’ve learnt from R4C’s Child Friendly Schools (CFS) Project, which has been running since 2015.

The SIQAEE project has seen much progress, and we’ve achieved significant results so far, collaborating closely with the local governments (Hupsekot and Baudikali Rural Municipalities) to do so. We’d like to extend our sincere thanks to both the municipalities and especially the Chairpersons Laxmi Pandey (Hupsekot) and Prakash Ojha (Baudikali), who have shown a real commitment to the work that we are doing to improve education in these areas. While we are making progress, we have met significant challenges along the way, such as issues with engaging parents, teachers and the local communities in the project.

Field trips like these are crucial to our project and to mitigating these challenges, showing our enduring commitment and support beyond regular check-ins by our School Facilitators. Each of the seven visits (five schools and two government offices) involved meetings reviewing progress, challenges and making suggestions for better support mechanisms. Meetings consisted of providing feedback on the support that R4C have given, discussing how to achieve better results, and suggesting areas for improvement.

Some of these impacts are as simple as making classrooms more appealing for students with decorations.

 The carpet, desks and paintwork were all provided by R4C. As a small aspect of teacher-training, R4C emphasises the importance of making classrooms appealing for young students, teaching how to make decorations and display posters and students’ work. Here, you can really see this in action. This is a simple and cheap way for teachers to make classrooms more inviting with materials that are accessible in rural areas.

Nursery Classroom at Shree Shiksha Bodhani Secondary School

So far, 90 homes have been visited with 118 parents reached. While this has been met with significant challenges (relating to travel to rural areas and resistance from parents), we are making steady progress.

 Following a speech and gift-giving ceremony by our CEO, Anil Paudel, and the Baudikali Chairman, Prakash Ojha, their speeches emphasised the importance of education and committing to studies. Prakash then presented gifts to reward the students’ hard work. Small ceremonies such as this are vital to show students Baudikali Municipality and R4C’s commitment to them, investing in their futures.  

R4C team having been greeted with Mala and Tika at a school that we support in Hupsekot.

 We had constructive and promising meetings with the school here. They have made clear strides towards providing their students with a high quality of education through the hard work and dedication of their teachers, Hupsekot Municipality and our R4C team.

Thank you to each school for welcoming us and for their continued collaboration and hard work towards building quality education for their students.