If Nepal continues its present pace, the target to make everybody literate in the country may not be achieved even in the next 60 years, experts said on the occasion of the 30th Education Day Wednesday.

Officials say the government is gearing up to meet the UN target of ‘Education For All’ (EFA) in the next ten years (that is, by 2015), but given the progress the country has made so far, experts warn that Nepal may not be able to meet the target even in the next six decades.

Nepal Samacharpatra daily quoted educationist Dr. Bidyanath Koirala as saying that the literacy rate could not increase as per the target in the country as the government’s commitments were only limited to slogans.

Of course, Nepal has made progress over the last five decades in terms of raising its literacy rate to 54 percent of the population in the year 2000 from just 2 percent in 1950. But still 274,000 children are out of school due to various reasons in the country. The on-going conflict has displaced at least 3,000 teachers from their work stations affecting the education of over 150,000 children.

According to INSEC, a human rights group, at least 64 students and 15 teachers have been killed so far during the on-going conflict.

According to the Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS), the net enrolment rate of primary-level students stands at 72 percent now. According to UNICEF, the rate of literacy among men in Nepal stood at 59 percent while that of women stood at 24 percent in the year 2000.

And, there is vast difference even among the literate people in the country. While over 77 percent residents in Kathmandu are literate, only 27.7 percent of the people in the remote northern district of Humla can read and write.

Humla has the lowest literacy rate in the country. nepalnews.com by Feb 23 05