TAPRI, 9 January 2008 (IRIN) - Hunger and poor diet among children continue to be a key reason for truancy in many remote villages in west Nepal, according to local non-governmental organisations (NGOs) working in the education sector.

"Food shortages have always been the cause of children not being able to attend school regularly," said schoolteacher Anil Srivastava, who teaches in the government-run Shri Gayatri primary school in Tapri village, Bardiya District, nearly 700km southwest of Kathmandu.

Tapri is the poorest village in poverty-stricken Bardiya District with most of its people living on less than US$1 a day, according to Dalit Sewa Sangh, a local NGO which focuses on helping rural communities.

Srivastava explained that Tapri villagers, like many others in west Nepal, are unable to produce sufficient food, and cannot afford to buy food for their children either.

"How can they continue to attend class when they are hungry all the time?" asked Bijaya Ghimire, a schoolteacher. Bijaya said on average 10-15 percent of students aged 10-14 in the area drop out every year before completing primary school.

Tapri's situation is typical of many remote villages in the country, where 14.5 percent of primary level students in grades 1-5 drop out every year, according to the Ministry of Education.

Poor facilities at school, long walking distances to school and lack of road access have combined with poverty and hunger among children in remote areas to exacerbate the problem, according to NGOs.

Over a million children out of school

"How can we ever motivate parents to send their poorly fed children to school?" asked schoolteacher Himalaya Prasad Adhikari. Teachers often get blamed for failing to keep children at school, but the real reason has always been poverty and food insecurity, Adhikari said.

"Food is the answer to their regular attendance but we can't afford that," said Adhikari.

Many teachers working in rural schools in remote villages in west Nepal have told IRIN that if the current situation continues it will be impossible to increase enrolment in schools.

Nepal has an estimated six million children aged 5-14, according to the government's Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS), and nearly 20 percent of them have never enrolled in schools, especially in rural areas where 80 percent of the population lives.

"The beginning of a child's destruction"

"Dropping out of school is merely the beginning of a child's destruction, as one can never attend school [again], and [they] will start working or get married at an early age," said Prem Yadav, a schoolteacher in Tapri.

Yadav said the problem is worse for girl students who, after dropping out of school, either get married or start working at an early age to support themselves and their families.

Most boys migrate to cities and towns in both Nepal and India and never return to school, said Yadav.

"Parents often ask us what they will get in return for sending their hungry children to school. We just have no answers," said Yadav. Until there is enough food or there is an improvement in their extreme poverty situation, over a million children will continue to be out of school, he said.

nn/at/cb

© IRIN. All rights reserved. More humanitarian news and analysis: http://www.IRINnews.org

IRIN news