That is the reality for many government school students today, despite large amounts of money being poured into the community school system and clear curriculum for every subject.
Sometimes I go into the "Marie Celeste" of science labs, with much confusion before the key can be found and then the layer of dust and copious cobwebs and mice droppings belying the report that "oh yes, we do practical science here".
In other schools the science teacher is struggling with little equipment and no designated lab but manages to do some experiments as demonstrations. In the best schools I have seen the teachers have made some of their own equipment from locally available materials.
So why, when Science equipment is gradually being made available to schools, is practical work so rarely a reality?
There are several reasons for this and schools will always say they do not have enough money to equip a lab properly. However,after talking to other INGO and NGO colleagues and visiting many schools, I believe that the key issues are two fold.
Firstly, how can a teacher who has never done any practical Science him or herself know how ot approach teaching practical Science to students? If we can get some of the current generation of teachers to learn and then enjoy teaching practical skills, then the current generation of students, when some of them become teachers, will find it much easier to teach their students practically.
The second issue concerns the Nepali (and Asian) cultural issue of "not wanting to lose face". The fear of failing at an experiment in front of their students makes many teachers avaoiud practical work altogether.
So what can we do? Firstly I have asked our field staff and school teachers whether this is an important issue for them and since they affirm that it is I have started to develop a training package using locally available materials plus a minimum of science equipment from suppliers. I have started by training our field staff and teaching them a few simple experiments that they can share with schools.
Practical science introductory training for our field staff
I will develop a more technical training designed fro science teachers and deliver this in our differnt working areas with the help of two of my Nepali colleagues who also have a science background. If we can get teachers to confidently and safely deliver 4 or 5 experiments a year that will be a good start and something we can then build on as they and their pupils grow in skills and confidence. Teachers will also learn about hazard labels and simple risk assessments because the concept of keeping pupils safe during their science lessons by predicting possible risks is also a new one.
