Big Promises, Smaller Share: How the Budget Fell Short of the RSP's Education Pledges

The Rastriya Swatantra Party rode to power on a near two-thirds majority partly on the strength of ambitious promises, and education sat prominently among them. Its policy and programme has cleared Parliament, and lawmakers are still debating the budget the finance minister has tabled. But measured against what the ruling party pledged to voters — and against its own governing documents — the education budget tells a sobering story: a share that has actually shrunk, even as the rupee figure climbed. It is, in effect, a relative cut dressed up as an increase.

Begin with what was promised. In its much-publicised 100-point manifesto — to which the party theatrically affixed thumbprints, turning it into a symbolic contract with citizens — points 61 through 65 dealt with school education. The party vowed to keep schools and universities from becoming political battlegrounds; to fundamentally improve the quality, access and competitiveness of public education while raising investment significantly over the next two decades; to regulate the private sector on fees, standards, teacher qualifications, infrastructure and outcomes so that education is run as a service rather than for profit; to establish at least one ultra-modern, inclusive school in every province; and to run continuous teacher professional development alongside a guru-shishya-based cultural revival programme.

The government's policy and programme echoed those ambitions. Points 45 to 49 promised free education up to the secondary level, a timely overhaul of curricula at every tier, increased investment in public education, and — most strikingly — the rollout of high-speed internet, e-learning, virtual classrooms, open digital content and artificial-intelligence-based learning systems across 10,000 schools. To that it added incentive schemes for outstanding teachers, therapy services and assistive technology for children with autism and neurodiversity, specially trained teachers, inclusive schooling, equitable access for marginalised and disabled children, merit-based and transparent teacher management, and a restructuring of universities. Every one of these, taken seriously, demands a substantial budget.

Yet the Cabinet's own 100-point governance-reform agenda, approved in late March, hints at where education really sat in the pecking order. Its education-related items — dissolving student unions, requiring universities to publish results on a fixed calendar, dropping the citizenship requirement for study up to bachelor's level, ending internal examinations through grade five, and shifting teacher payroll and post-retirement management to the provinces — are overwhelmingly administrative and political housekeeping. Conspicuously absent is any mention of educational quality, teacher positions, curriculum reform or professional development. For a government that had promised a fundamental overhaul of learning, the omission is telling.

Then came the budget, and with it the gap between rhetoric and resources. The education sector was allocated Rs 218.30 billion out of a total budget of Rs 2,124.34 billion — which amounts to just 10.28 percent. Even folding in the Rs 4 billion now set aside separately for science, technology and innovation (a head that in past years sat together with education) lifts the figure only to about 10.47 percent. By contrast, the share in recent years hovered higher: the current fiscal year's education allocation, as the Kathmandu Post noted before the budget, stood at 10.75 percent of the national budget, compared to 10.95 percent in the previous year. The rupee amount rose — from around Rs 211 billion to Rs 218.30 billion — for one reason only: the overall budget swelled by more than a quarter. Strip away that inflation of the whole, and education's slice is thinner than last year's. The Kathmandu Post

The shortfall looks starker still against Nepal's own international commitments. The country has repeatedly pledged on global platforms to devote 20 percent of the national budget (or 5 percent of GDP) in education, but successive governments have failed to live up to the commitment. With the share stuck around 10-11 percent for years and now at roughly 10.28 percent — and amounting to less than 3 percent of the GDP — the new government has landed at about half of what it had promised the world, let alone its own voters.