Magic Bus Nepal
Magic Bus began working in Nepal in October 2016.
Magic Bus works with children and young people living in poverty, taking them from a childhood full of challenges to a life with meaningful livelihoods. We equip young people with the skills and knowledge they need to grow up and move out of poverty.
Children on the Magic Bus programme complete school, fend off destabilisers such as child marriage and child labour and become first-generation salary earners.
At a glance
- Nawalparasi district where we work is located in the western part of the country
- The literacy rate in Nepal is 71 %
(Source: District Education Office, 2017) - Female literacy rate stands at 62.76 % and the male literacy rate is 79.88% in Nawalparasi
(Source: Nepal Census, 2011) - The school drop out rate is 8.3%. In Nawalparasi 11 % of the total children are either out of reach to school or school dropout cases
- 37 % of girls in Nepal marry before the age of 18 and 10% are married by the age of 15
The baseline result has shown that the learning outcomes of children in the targeted schools are really poor. A huge number of students are very far from their grade-appropriate learning levels. In fact, most of the students have not acquired basic literacy and numeracy even after spending six or seven years in school. The challenge is huge and we should first concentrate on basic literacy and numeracy and then move on to content literacy or grade-appropriate competency gradually. But since the intervention is being pitched at the level of class VI (11 years of age), there is a probability that the accumulated learning challenges of the previous years will hinder the progress of the programme. Thus, there is a need to reflect on whether the intervention needs to be pitched at the primary level so that the learning challenges can be addressed at the source.
Source: Census and Ministry of education report Nepal 2016 and Baseline assessment conducted by Vikramshila in 3 schools of Nawalparasi.
