24. Citizen-Led Assessment and the Participatory Approach to Peace Education in Nepal

In 2015, in response to long-term instability, Nepal became a federal state with a number of powers devolved to 753 new local governments. These important powers include regulating education and health care. Education is one of the key responsibilities of local governance in such a context. This paper examines education governance from the perspectives of the participatory peace education approach in Nepal. This paper focuses on challenging two aspects of current education governance. The first is the problematic nature of global and national agendas in learning assessment, which don’t match the realities and needs of local communities in Nepal, enforcing traditional ‘pen and paper’ based paper assessments. To this end, this chapter discusses an exemplary project which engaged in participatory pedagogic methods and mobilized hundreds of young undergraduate students to assess the reading and numeracy skills of all children aged between five and sixteen years in the sampled households, and in partnership generated new approaches to learning issues. Second, this addressed the problem of teachers’ use of sometimes violent disciplinary techniques. In this second approach, the paper outlines how the project engaged teachers in participatory exercises that trained teachers to use non-violent communication. The researchers and teachers designed a scheme of work for the classes together, discussed solving the classroom challenges non-violently, and reflected on their classroom experiences.