You only give me your funny paper
In the early afternoon, as classes conclude across Nepal, the exodus begins. Thousands of teenage girls stream out of school gates, their futures far from certain. For many, this will be their final year of formal education. In a country where women outnumber men in the working-age population, you might expect a correspondingly bustling female workforce. You would be disappointed.
Only one in four Nepali women is employed or actively seeking work. This gap owes as much to government failure as to social tradition: girls are brought into school, but given little reason to stay.
A decade ago, Nepal was celebrated for getting girls into classrooms. Primary school enrolment rates for girls soared past 150%—a figure inflated by late starters and returnees, but a clear signal of progress. That momentum has dissolved. By 2024 gross enrolment had slumped to 124%, suggesting soaring dropouts. Budget cuts tell part of the story. Since 2011, the government has pared back education spending from 17% to below 12% of the national budget, missing its own 15% target and falling far short of the 20% advocated by international bodies. The pandemic then delivered a final blow, wiping out fragile gains.
The funds that remain are consumed by the machinery of the system, not its pupils. Roughly three-quarters of the education budget pays teachers’ salaries. A mere 3% is dedicated to improving access or quality. The result is overcrowded classrooms, as well as crumbling infrastructure and a chronic shortage of learning materials. School may be technically free, but a decent education carries a hidden, prohibitive cost. The most devastating price is paid in learning itself. Fewer than 40% of young women who have attended school can read a single sentence. When the return on investment is so negligible, dropping out becomes a rational choice.
That rationality, however, imposes a damaging cost on the nation. The World Bank estimates each additional year of schooling boosts an individual’s future earnings by 10-20%. Women with a primary education earn 14-19% more than those with none; those with a tertiary degree earn nearly triple. Globally, closing the gender education gap could unlock between $15trn and $30trn in lifetime productivity gains. For Nepal, a country where half the population is under 25 and where two million people were pushed back into poverty after the 2015 earthquakes and the pandemic, this is not an abstract figure. It is a forsaken lifeline.
Officials are not blind to the problem. A patchwork of programmes offers scholarships and free meals, as well as incentives to hire female teachers. These efforts, though well-intentioned, are overwhelmed by systemic failure. When eight in ten girls leave school before the eleventh grade, and when those who remain often emerge barely literate, the core issue shifts from access to quality. Throwing symbolic policies at a structurally underfunded system is like rearranging deck chairs on a sinking ship.
The bigger Nepali story contains elements of hope. Poverty rates have fallen dramatically, and remittances from migrant workers sustain countless households. Yet the nation’s human capital—its most valuable asset—is dangerously underdeveloped. The latest Nepal Living Standards Survey draws a clear line between education and income. Households led by someone with no schooling are two-and-a-half times more likely to be poor than those led by someone with even a primary education. In households headed by the highly educated, poverty is virtually absent.
A stubborn school of thought insists that economic growth must come before serious educational investment. This gets the causality backwards. Education, particularly for girls, acts as a powerful multiplier. It correlates with lower fertility rates, better family health, higher labour-force participation and stronger GDP growth. One study suggests achieving universal secondary education for girls could raise Nepal’s average GDP by 10% within a decade. This is not philanthropy. It is the bedrock of fiscal prudence.
The cost of inaction is escalating. Regional peers such as Vietnam and Bangladesh have reaped a demographic dividend by prioritising education. Nepal risks being left behind, not just by history but by its own neglect. A perverse equilibrium has taken hold: low-quality schooling yields low returns, which in turn is used to justify low investment. Breaking this cycle means moving beyond donor-funded pilot projects. It necessitates a political reckoning that places the education of girls at the very centre of national economic strategy, rather than on the sentimental periphery.
The government for now seems content with marginal adjustments. But aspirations for prosperity built on a foundation of undereducated youth are built on sand. The classroom, that most humble of institutions, remains the most potent—and most neglected—space to redraw the nation’s future. A pity, then, that so many desks are emptying. ■
