Nepali private schools and tolerated illegality: A Foucauldian analysis of privatisation of education in Nepal

Abstract

The Education Act 1971 is the main policy document under which schools in Nepal are operated. With the change in political regime, this policy has been amended as per the ideology of the incoming regime. Although private schools started to show their influence in Nepal in the late 1980s, excessive growth of private schools began with the neoliberal policy adopted by the incoming political parties soon after Nepal became a multiparty democratic country in the early 1990s. However, with the Maoists becoming a dominant political force in the country in the late 1990s, several challenges in the operation of private schools began. Issues such as closing down or monitoring of private schools are now common mass media headlines. This paper analyses such a situation in the operation of private schools in Nepal. It uses primary sources of data collected via semi-structured interviews with teachers, administrators and principals of two private schools located in the capital city of Nepal, Kathmandu. It also uses secondary sources that include mass media output and other documentary sources such as documents from private schools’ associations and government policy related to private schools. This study found that operation of private schools in Nepal is comparable to what Michel Foucault calls tolerated illegality.

Keywords

Foucault Nepal private schools tolerated illegality

Introduction

Mushrooming of private schools in Nepal started after the democratic change in the 1990s. People attribute this large-scale growth of private schools, especially in the urban centres of Nepal to the liberal policy adopted by the incoming Democratic government of the Nepali Congress in the 1990s (Sharma Poudyal, 2013b, 2016). The Nepali Congress is a liberal political party that dominated the political scene of Nepal soon after Nepal became a democratic country in the early 1990s. It is a good example of neoliberalism and privatisation of education in Nepal (Sharma Poudyal, 2013a, 2015). However, with the Maoists becoming a dominant political force, private schools of Nepal came under constant attack (Act governing private schools sought, 2010; Don’t commercialise education, 2010; Thapa, 2011). Being a political party with an extreme leftist ideology, the Maoists were against privatisation of education in Nepal. Adopting a Marxist state-oriented defence for education, the Maoist affiliated teachers’ unions and students’ unions started constantly pressuring private schools’ owners. They were sometimes threatening private schools with closure and sometimes asking them to pay education tax (Pay education tax: PM tells school owners, 2012; Private schools shut nationwide due to ISTU strike, 2011; Thapa, 2011). Such activity led to the current fluid and uncertain environment around the privatisation of education in Nepal.

Because of such an environment surrounding the privatisation of education, the debate on the regulation of private schools has been growing day by day (Act governing private schools sought, 2010; Sharma, 2012). More and more people, especially those living in the urban areas, are becoming involved in these debates. As things stand now, these debates are not likely to be resolved anytime soon. Due to such ongoing debates and the inability of the incoming government to properly regulate private schools in the country, there has been continuous academic and political pressure on the government for proper monitoring and systematic operation of such schools (Wagley, 2013, 2014). The way the private schools operate in Nepal is comparable to what the French philosopher, Michel Foucault calls ‘tolerated illegality’ (Dumm, 1996; Foucault, 1977, 1995; Honneth, 1994). Describing Western society during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Foucault argued that when non-application of laws is deep rooted in societies, illegality becomes the culture for the social and economic functioning of society. The same situation is seen in the operation of private schools in Nepal. This paper analyses the situation of tolerated illegality existing in the private education context of Nepal using Foucault’s notion of tolerated illegality. Before outlining the sources of data and what I found from this study, I discuss Foucault’s notion of tolerated illegality.

Foucault and tolerated illegality

Michel Foucault, a well-known French philosopher, is known for his study of the relationship between power and knowledge and the subsequent use of these ideas as a form of social control in social institutions such as schools, prisons and hospitals. Foucault concentrated his earlier work, especially during the early 1970s, on the disciplinary power that operates within institutions such as schools, prisons, hospitals and asylums. An example of this was his ground-breaking work in Discipline and Punish (Foucault, 1977, 1995). Disciplinary power, as Foucault sees it, involves techniques of power centred on the human body. Foucault (1995) argues that discipline is a specific technique of power, which takes the individual as an object and instrument of power and produces subjected bodies. It involves the use of surveillance, a system to observe and monitor individuals without letting the person being observed know that they are being observed. Foucault suggested that those in the position of power, such as the monarchs, can turn those without power into a subject/object or an instrument of power. Foucault (1980) terms such a process as the subjection of power. Foucault asserts that during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, rather than imposing power from above, people made themselves comfortable in the existing conditions (Danaher et al., 2000). This resulted in the notion of “descending individualism” as suggested by Foucault (Foucault, 1977: 193). Descending individualism means the general population are closely monitored and individualised lower in the hierarchy. Descending individualism contrasts with ascending individualism that existed in the feudal and monarchical rule, where the more powerful were those most noticed and watched (Danaher et al., 2000).

Foucault indicated that power is not the property of mighty people such as kings, but is a force influencing people in their day-to-day lives (Danaher et al., 2000). Thus, Foucault (1995) was against power concentration in an individual. He calls such power (that exists in the form of personal power of the sovereign, for example) monarchical superpower. He argues that such concentrations of power in a sovereign lead to dysfunctions of power. Foucault asserts, using examples from the eighteenth century, that there was a crisis in the field of legal order, resulting in the legal order being dominated by illegality (Dumm, 1996). This means, according to Foucault, “non-observance, that which does not measure up to the rule” (Foucault, 1977: 178) but departs from the rule, calling such activity ‘tolerated illegality.’ It suggests that the non-application of rules and regulations was taken as normal for the economic and social functioning of society during this period. Foucault further noted that illegality was so deep rooted in societies that it became a necessary part of people’s lives. Detailing the existence of such a scenario in Western society during the eighteenth century, Foucault writes:

In short, penal reform was born at the point of junction between the struggle against the super-power of the sovereign and that against the infra-power of acquired and tolerated illegalities. And if penal reform was anything more than the temporary result of a purely circumstantial encounter, it was because, between this super-power and infra-power, a whole network of relations was being formed. By placing on the side of the sovereign the additional burden of a spectacular, unlimited, personal, irregular and discontinuous power, the form of monarchical sovereignty left the subjects free to practice a constant illegality; this illegality was like the correlative of this type of power. So much so that in attacking the various prerogatives of the sovereign one was also attacking the functioning of the illegalities. (Foucault, 1977: 87–88)

Foucault formulates that the situation of tolerated illegality was the consequence of dysfunctional monarchical power during eighteenth-century Europe, and the general public during this period appears to have been aware of the degree and levels of toleration acceptable to society (Dumm, 1996). In spite of their awareness of the level of illegality existing in society, people were not overly concerned about this, thereby making illegality a necessary part of their life.

Data generation and analysis

The data for this paper were collected from both primary and secondary sources. Most of these data sources were part of the data I collected for my PhD thesis (Sharma Poudyal, 2016). The primary sources include a semi-structured interview with ten research participants from two private schools located in Kathmandu, the capital city of Nepal. The research was conducted over three months, beginning in June 2011. The research participants contributing to the primary sources were teachers and other non-owner staff working in the two private schools and also school owners of both schools. Since the school owners were also working as the principals of their respective schools, I use the term ‘owner/principal’ throughout this paper to refer to them and highlight the dual nature of their responsibility. In addition to teachers, the other non-owners staff were the administrators with certain middle level managerial positions such as primary co-ordinator, primary in-charge and secondary in-charge of the first school, and vice principal and Head of Department of the second school. In addition to the primary data sources, this paper also uses secondary documentary sources that include newspaper articles on the private schooling context, official documents from the government of Nepal, private schools’ teachers unions, Nepal Institutional Teachers’ Union (ISTU) and private schools’ association, and Private and Boarding Schools Organisation of Nepal (PABSON).

The generated data were analysed using Seidel’s (1998) qualitative data analysis (QDA) model. According to Seidel (1998: 1), QDA is a process of ‘noticing, collecting and thinking about the interesting thing.’ The interview data together with the documentary sources of data created a record of the ‘thing’ which I noticed during the data generation phase. These generated data were read repeatedly to better understand the situation of tolerated illegality. The process of moving back and forth between the generated data and emerging analysis was involved in the analysis process (Corbin and Strauss, 2008; Strauss and Corbin, 1990).

Findings and discussions

Information generated from the primary sources suggests that most staff working in the Nepali private schools are not happy with the existing government lack of supervision and monitoring of private schools. Most staff participants I interviewed claimed that private schools need to be appropriately regulated by the government. Regulation of private schools is necessary for the systematic operation of these schools. The staff participants’ viewpoint suggested that they were experiencing exploitation from the school owners. Staff exploitation was due to lack of proper government regulation. On the other hand, private school owners were complaining about unnecessary government regulation. School owners argue that government policy about private schools is unclear. Furthermore, they added that because of a lack of clarity, there is unnecessary external pressure on private schools. The findings from the secondary data sources also support these findings of the issues of government regulation on private schools. These are discussed below, using the following themes.

Policy confusion

The owner participants of this study argue that government policy related to private schools is not clear. On the one hand, the government allows private schools to register as private limited companies. On the other hand, the government pressurises school owners via student and teacher unions to stop commercialising their private schools. Regarding this situation, the owner/principal of one of the case study schools said:

There is no separate Act for private schools in Nepal. During the monarchy, we used to run the schools under the supervision of the District Education Office (DEO). Now we are registered as a private limited company and need to report to the Ministry of Education (MOE), and Ministry of Finance (MOF).

The owner/principal believes that there is a lack of clarity in the policy around private schools in Nepal. He further added that the only solution to this confusion is to have a separate act for the operation of private schools. There are contradictions, however. When schools’ owners were given the option either to register their schools as a trust or a business organisation, most of them opted to register their schools as business organisations. However, some schools’ owners refused to pay the tax levied by the MOF. Schools’ owners unwillingness to pay tax is reflected by the above quote from the owner/principal who was happy to register his school as a business organisation, but not happy about paying tax to the MOF. Similarly, schools registered as trusts were unwilling to hand over their school buildings, land and other physical facilities to the government. As reflected from the above quote, the Nepali private school owners want a liberal government approach for private schools in the country, allowing them to excise power as they see fit to, apparently, maximise private profit. Since these schools are registered as business organisations under the Companies Act, 2063 (2006), owners want to run their school as businesses. That is why they want deregulation. It is an example of a ‘negative connotation of state power’ or classical liberalism (Peters, 2012) and school owners want freedom from state interference (Peters, 2009).

The above stated quote from the owner/principal of the first school aligned to the demands of the private schools’ umbrella organisation (Private and Boarding Schools’ Organisation, Nepal (PABSON) and the National Private and Boarding Schools’ Organisation (NPABSON)). Speaking at a program in Kathmandu, officials from both of these organisations stated:

The existing Education Act lacks provisions governing the operation of private educational institutions, and the government needs to devise a separate education policy to regulate private educational institutions. (Act governing private schools sought, 2010: para. 2)

Most private school stakeholders including the general public, perceived PABSON and NPABSON to be organisations representing school owners, and this perception is reflected in an earlier quote from an owner/principal and the subsequent excerpt from the newspaper article. It is also reinforced in the following excerpt from the PABSON preamble:

In order to guide, promote, give permanency and protect the schools established in the private sector by private investors throughout the nation, keeping in view the limitation of the national resources, PABSON has been established to harmonise, coordinate and professionally develop the education system and institutions of the nation while enhancing and safeguarding the professional right of autonomy of the founders, all round development and safety of the professional rights of the principals, teachers staff and students. (PABSON, n.d.: para. 2)

PABSON justifies the necessity of private schools in Nepal claiming the government’s inability to meet the demands of the growing population through its limited resources. This excerpt from PABSON represents a neoliberal view of education as a private good instead of a common good and suggests that private schools are good for Nepal. The quote implies that the main objective of PABSON is to protect private schools and their owners while espousing an educational interest. Although the excerpt indicates that PABSON is committed to the overall development of the education system in Nepal, which includes safeguarding the professional rights of teachers working in private schools, this appears to be a secondary objective. Private school owners (as indicated by the quotes from the owner/principal of the first school and the subsequent newspaper article) argue for separate legal provision about private schools. They argue that the present government policy for private schools operating under the same legislation as the public-school system does not work. These ideas aligned with the neoliberal principles of efficiency and effectiveness, as proposed by New Public Management (NPM). NPM assumes that the efficiency and effectiveness of any organisation including the public sector can be improved from private sector management principles (Fitzgerald and Rainnie, 2012). However, schools’ owners seem to consider education as a private good instead of a common good. It means they take students and parents as consumers, teachers as producers, and they (owner/principals) as managers and entrepreneurs (Harris, 2007). Their interests are in increasing profit and international competitiveness in education rather than education for the common people (Apple and Whitty, 2002).

Although other stakeholders of private schools, including parents, also believe that existing government policy regarding private schools is not clear, their ideas differ. For example, the newspaper article below describes the overall view of different stakeholders of private schools:

The stakeholders of private schools have expressed the need for an effective policy and strong regulatory mechanism to regulate private education institutions. Speaking at an interaction … , they [stakeholders] said private education sector requires a strong monitoring mechanism and effective

procedures while issuing a licence.

(PVT schools: Call for the regulatory mechanism, 2011: para. 1–2)

As indicated in the above extract from the newspaper, teachers including other non-owner staff believe that the private schools should be regulated properly to enable systematic operation. Owners and teachers’ agendas are starkly different. In order to bring changes, some efforts are noticeable. Such efforts include continual pressure from Nepal-ISTU on the government, while school owners lobby the government to achieve de-regulation through their organisations, PABSON and the NPABSON. Such activities of Nepal-ISTU and PABSON and NPABSON are an indication of shifting trends in the mode of power relations.

The ‘how’ of power relations within the studied schools during a monarchy aligned toward the juridical and liberal notion of power (Marshall, 2009). The schools’ owners used to perceive power as their right, or a commodity. Power in this context was considered as a concrete substance which the schools’ owners hold because of their ownership and positions. However, with the change in the political environment of the country and subsequent unionisation of private school teachers, power relations started changing. This shift of power relations towards a military model of war and struggle between schools’ owners and non-owner staff, government and school owners, and non-owner staff and the government of Nepal was noticeable (Foucault, 2003).

Different stakeholders from private schools, including owners, argue that the government does not have in place proper regulatory mechanisms for the operation of private schools. They perceive that current government policy towards private schools is one of the reasons for constant disruption in the smooth operation of private schools in the country. For example, a secondary teacher from the first school argues that the registration of private schools under the Companies Act encourages private schools to get involved in business activities:

The government is allowing private schools to register under the Companies Act as a private limited company. This has encouraged private schools to get involved in business related activities such as selling books, stationery, uniforms and others. Private school owners are taking full advantage of the government policy.

This suggests the highly commercial orientation of private schools which appears to overshadow any education focus, except the one on exam success (Blackmore, 1988; Ross and Gibson, 2007). The above secondary teacher was also indicating that private schools see education as a private good instead of a common good, which treats students and parents as consumers of this service (Hursh, 2007). The staff participants (as indicated by the secondary teacher of the school) believe that the government policy about private schools encourages owners to exploit different private schools’ stakeholders, including parents and staff. The staff believed that parents and other stakeholders are exploited by the business-related activities in which private schools are involved. However, the owner/principal of the second school rejects the commercial view except to say that:

We are operating our school under the Companies Act as a private limited company, under the name of a company. Many people are involved, and we have an opportunity to share many ideas and also risks as well as profits.

This owner/principal believes that there is no harm in operating a private school under the Companies Act as a private limited company. He argues that parents are operating private schools. They (parents) pay fees as per the service provided to them. This owner/principal appears to express a neoliberal view of education as a private good rather than a public good (Sharma Poudyal, 2013a). The owner’s quote suggests that education needs to be based on supply and demand basis, with parents paying fees for the services they get from schools. Taking schools as profit-oriented enterprises, the school owner indicated that the primary purpose of education is to serve the market.

However, when we consider staff with private schools as private limited companies, the staff may be more vulnerable in their workplace since these schools are not always complying with the government regulation to pay their staff similar to the public-school system of the country. Salary is an expensive component of business. School owners, therefore, appear to prefer a young, inexperienced, inexpensive teaching force that is replaceable whenever needed. As private schools compete through their students’ performance in the standardised national level School Leaving Certificate (SLC) examination as outlined earlier, primary level teachers, in particular, felt more vulnerable as their work was not directly linked with the SLC examination. By the government not enforcing regulations, private schools can operate how they choose. Private schools’ operation on their own raise the debate of regulation and deregulation addressed next.

Regulation versus deregulation

Staff working in Nepali private schools want private schools to be properly regulated. However, private school owners feel that they are being unnecessarily regulated by the government, and would prefer the government to let them work freely. For example, the owner/principal of the first school points out that under the new provision, schools are registered as a business organisation. Private schools need to submit their booklists to the MOE and fee structure to the MOF at the beginning of each year. He feels this is unnecessary.

Almost all the staff participants of the first school, including the administrator, argued that the future of the staff working in their school has been very uncertain. After the political change in the country, the school owners were obliged to deal carefully with their staff due to the external political pressure, but this was short-lived, and current regulations tend not to be enforced. Staff believe that properly regulating private schools will prevent the schools’ owners from doing whatever they like and put in place better systems for the good of staff and students. Staff from the second school also agreed with this. One female teacher said:

External pressure is making private school owners aware and preventing them from doing whatever they like. However, it is short-lived, and the government needs to develop proper rules and regulations for the private schools so that the operation of such schools will become systematic. This will make it easier for us during work and also after retirement.

Staff believe that external pressure in the form of union agitation is making private school owners more careful in dealing with staff, but this may not persist if the agitation wavers. This is why staff want government rules to apply. Similarly, another woman teacher from the same school said:

If the government can create the environment for regulating private schools properly, it will be beneficial to both employees and employers of private schools. However, only making proper rules is not enough; the government needs to work towards proper implementation of the rules.

This quote from a woman teacher from the second school highlighted the aspects of lack of proper implementation of government rules and regulation. Another two teachers (one male and one female teacher) from the same school agreed. Talking about the government’s role in the implementation of rules and regulations, a male secondary teacher said, “The present government is doing nothing to bring a system to private education in Nepal. At least it [system with proper regulation] was there during the monarchy.” However, a secondary teacher from the first school has a different idea about the government’s lack of commitment towards private schools:

Due to political instability, government administrators [from DEO), MOE and Department of Education (DoE)] are unable to work with motivation for the proper implementation of education rules and regulations of private schools. Political influence is one of the main reasons for the lack of proper implementation of education rules.

The staff participants believe that there is a lack of supervision/monitoring from the relevant government authority, whether MOE, DEO or DoE. The staff participants believe that private school owners are doing whatever they like due to such lack of government monitoring of private schools. However, private school owners appear to prefer deregulation. In respect to this, the owner/principal of the first school said:

Since the private sector in Nepal is now able to handle the education sector, the government should hand over the education to the private sector and instead invest the money [currently invested in education sector] in other sectors.

This response suggests a neoliberal view about education as a commodity best served by private interests rather than the state. This view surrounding the public monopoly of education assumes that when education is handed over to the private sector, parents will get the benefits of choice (Cheng, 1999; Colclough, 1996; Hursh, 2007). This, however, may not serve public interests, given the way the private school owners appear to run the two schools in my study. If they are indicative of other private schools, deregulation may be inappropriate and may ultimately only serve the ruling classes rather than the whole population. A private system of education may favour a limited number of parents with better social, political and economic capital, neglecting large groups of people in society (Apple and Whitty, 2002). The Maoists, the dominant political force during this time, are against education as a private good. Reflecting on the Maoist ideology, the Maoist affiliated teachers’ unions have been continuously disrupting the operation of private schools, and perhaps this points to their awareness of private school owners’ agendas. The following newspaper article excerpt supports this:

The Maoist affiliated All Nepal Teachers’ Union (ANTU) has announced to disrupt the establishment of new private schools … ANTU president charged that private sectors have used education as a shortcut to prosperous business and commercialized the entire sector … [President] said his organisation would create moral pressure on the leader of their mother party to withdraw their children from private schools if they have any. (Don’t commercialise education, 2010: para. 1–2)

This extract from the newspaper article suggests that the Maoists as a political party are against the neoliberal conceptualisation of education, and it signposts the existence of a struggle between the school owners who represent the capitalist class of society, and the Maoists, representing the working class of society (Marx, 2001; Marx and Engels, 1964). Such struggle between school owners and the Maoists is leading to the situation of tolerated illegality discussed next.

Situation of tolerated illegality

Foucault (1977, 1995) introduced the notion of tolerated illegality in Discipline and Punish. Foucault argued that the non-application of law and non-observance of many ordinances was taken as the normal economic and political condition for the functioning of society during the eighteenth century. This was theorised as relating to the deeply rooted nature of illegality in society. As a result, illegality was a cultural essence of life and necessary for the normal functioning of society.

Such a scenario was also seen in the context of my study. The government of Nepal has constantly been framing rules and regulations related to the private education sector without any success in implementing them. The private education sector violates the government’s policies and regulations, arguing that the government did not involve them in framing the policy and regulations and so they do not have to follow them. However, reality suggests that the government does not have the resources to enforce compliance (Khaniya, 2007; Wagley, 2013). For example, when the MOE introduced the regulatory framework in May 2002, including provisions for registering the existing schools either as a trust or as a private company, the majority of schools opted to register themselves as private companies. However, these private company schools were not willing to pay taxes levied by the MOF. Similarly, schools registered as trusts were not willing to hand over their property to the state (Caddell, 2009). Thus, the private schools continue to violate the government regulatory framework designed for their operation. The Seventh Amendment of the Educational Act 2028 (1971), made in 2001, states that the concerned authority can cancel the permission or approval of the private school if it is found to act against the provision of the Education Act (Ministry of Education, His Majesty’s Government of Nepal, 1971), yet this has rarely been exercised.

The Supreme Court of Nepal is now featuring. For example, after the Supreme Court directed the government to regulate private and boarding schools of the country, the MOE drafted The Private and Boarding Schools Guidelines 2013. As noted earlier, these guidelines have been disregarded by private schools even though their representatives were also involved in framing them. On several occasions, the Supreme Court has ordered the DoE to strictly monitor irregularities in private schools, such as fees hikes, entrance examination charges, selling books and uniforms on the school’s premises or using books not approved by the Curriculum Development Centre (Ghimire, 2012; Sharma, 2013). The DoE was then forced to announce that it would officially cancel the licence for those schools not obeying orders from the Supreme Court regarding tuition fees and sale of textbooks and uniforms on the school premises (Ghimire, 2012). However, this has rarely happened, as there is no information on any schools’ licences being revoked.

With continuous pressure from different stakeholders of private schools, the parliament finally endorsed Amendment Eight of the Education Act 2071(Ghimire, 2016). As a result of this amendment, the school education system was restructured from primary (1–5), lower secondary (6–8), secondary (9–10) and higher secondary (9–12) to basic (1–8) and secondary (9–12). It also means the national examination system, SLC examination which was conducted in Year 10 has now shifted to Grade 12. Although this amendment addresses the stakeholder concern about private schools, this was just done to make the existing school operators happy. Because of the excessive lobbying of private school owners and pressure from the lawmakers representing the private sectors, the provision for registering private schools as cooperative was scrapped, and the amendment only suggested the new private schools needed to be registered as trusts, not private limited companies. It was done to reduce competition among private schools and allows existing private school owners to run their schools as a monopoly (Ghimire, 2016; Rai, 2016; Wagley, 2016).

Conclusion

The government of Nepal appears to be trying hard to bring private education sectors under the same regulatory framework within the public-school system. But the government has not been successful. Private schools’ umbrella organisations, PABSON and NPABSON, are often seen demanding separate laws and/or regulatory frameworks for the operation of private schools. Reality suggests they are just doing this in their self-interest and are violating rules and regulations of the government. When the MOE introduced a regulatory framework in May 2002 with a provision for registering the existing private schools, either as a trust or as a private company, the majority of schools opted to register themselves as a private companies. However, those schools registered as a private company did not agree to pay the tax levied by the MOF. There has been much debate about this issue of private schools paying tax. School owners argue that they are service organisations and should not be liable for the tax. If this is the case, why are they registering their schools as a private limited company? Moreover, there are still many service organisations in Nepal such as banks and telecom, which pay tax to the government. If schools are going to register as private companies, then it follows that they should follow the regulations, including paying taxes.

What next?

No one can underestimate the contributions of private schools to the overall educational development of Nepal. Regarding students’ performance in the SLC exams and employment opportunity, private schools’ contribution is worth noting. However, this does not mean they can do whatever they like and are above the laws of the land. Some educationists in Nepal are suggesting an agreed regulatory framework for private schools, an agreed framework that requires the involvement of all stakeholders. If the agreed framework works, what does this mean for the recent guidelines introduced by the MOE? These were also developed from the consensus from all the stakeholders of private schools. It is high time the private school operators, policy-makers and other stakeholders deliberated the issue seriously for the systematic operation of private schools in Nepal. Long term stability of private schools in Nepal has become a necessity, and it is not possible without a proper regulatory framework.

Footnotes

Declaration of conflicting interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Chandra Sharma Poudyal is a lecturer at the department of business in Cornell Institute of Business and Technology, Tauranga, New Zealand. He completed his PhD in Education from the Faculty of Education, The University of Waikato. His research interests are in the privatisation of education. His work focuses on the issues of neo-liberalisation and privatisation of education from Marxist and Foucauldian perspectives.

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