Officials of the Ministry of Education (MoE) of Nepal met with the head of the Literacy Coordinating Council Secretariat (LCC) in their visit to the Philippines recently. The visit is in line with Nepal MoE’s School Sector Reform Plan 2009-2015 which aims to improve equity and access, quality and relevance, and effeciency and effectiveness of education focusing at the school and community levels.

The Nepal Education Ministry officials were particularly interested to learn  how the Philippines has implemented decentralization in education, capacity development at the local level, and planning and resource mobilization at school and community levels.

After giving a short background about LCC as a policy-making body on literacy endeavors, its secretariat head Dr. Norma Salcedo acquainted the officials on the various literacy programs the LCC assists and some strategies the Council employs to enhance  literacy advocacy nationwide. She also gave information on the literacy rate of Filipinos, including other literacy programs the government promotes to improve the quality of education in the country that would eventually gain benefit for the Filipinos – children.youth, and adults alike.

The exchange, though short, proved meaningful to Nepal MoE officials. As they believe regional and international experience on educational reform provides immense opportunity for their country to learn from different sources and to adopt strategies in the course of their reform initiatives, they consider the Philippines as one that has a wide range of lessons and best examples in education reform initiaitves which could be instrumental for their senior management to learn from.

The Nepal Education Ministry delegates also met with other officials of the Department of Education including the Bureau of Secondary Education, National Educational Testing and Research Center, and Teacher Education Council.