Kathmandu : About 950,000 children in Nepal will not be able to return to school unless urgent action is taken to provide temporary learning spaces and to repair damaged school buildings following April 25 earthquake, the Unicef has said.
Almost 24,000 classrooms were damaged or destroyed in the 7.9-magnitude quake that hit the Himalayan nation, with many suffering more damage in subsequent aftershocks.
The scale of the education crisis is expected to grow over the coming days and weeks as additional information flows in from remote areas. Schools are due to reopen on May 15, the UN agency said on Friday.
“Almost one million children who were enrolled in schools before the earthquake could now find they have no school building to return to,” said Tomoo Hozumi, the Unicef’s representative in Nepal.
“Children affected by the earthquake need urgent life-saving assistance like clean water and shelter, but schools in emergencies — even in a temporary set-up — play a vital role too,” he said.
“They minimise disruption to children’s education, protect them from exploitation and abuse, and provide them with messages to keep them safe and healthy.”
The killer earthquake on April 25 has left over 8,000 people dead and 16,000 others injured.
The official said going to school also allows children to regain a vital sense of routine that can help them come to terms with their experiences.
In the severely-affected districts of Gorkha, Sindhupalchok and Nuwakot, an estimated over 90 percent of the schools have been destroyed while around 80 percent of the school buildings have collapsed in Dhading.
In some areas, including Kathmandu and Bhaktapur, approximately nine in 10 surviving school buildings have been used as emergency shelters.
The Unicef is concerned that great strides made over the last 25 years in increasing primary school enrolment in Nepal – from 64 percent in 1990 to over 95 percent today – could suffer a serious setback in the aftermath of the earthquake.
Nepal’s high dropout rate was already a major concern.
Around 1.2 million Nepali children between the age group of five and 16 have either never attended school or have dropped out.
The Unicef’s experience shows that children who are out of school for extended periods, including during emergencies, become less and less likely to ever return to the classroom.
“There is a desperate need to set up alternative learning spaces, assess and repair buildings, and mount a public awareness campaign encouraging families to send their children back to school and preschool,” according to Hozumi.
“Prolonged interruption to education can be devastating for children’s development and future prospects,” the UN official added.
The Unicef has launched a $50 million appeal to support its humanitarian response to the earthquake in Nepal over the next three months, as part of a wider inter-agency flash appeal.