Issues and challenges to education policies and practices in Nepal: A Descriptive and Factor Analysis

<ns5:p>Background Despite many improvements in Nepal’s school education policies, various challenges persist at the implementation level. Policy evaluation has not sufficiently utilized the involvement of students, who are the primary stakeholders in education. Objective To identify the problems and challenges in Nepal’s education policies and practices from students’ perspectives. Methods Descriptive analysis (weighted mean and standard deviation) and principal component analysis (PCA) were conducted on the responses of 390 students from 73 secondary schools. Results The study found that satisfaction with overall educational quality was the lowest (mean 2.97). PCA extracted three main components: (1) systemic communication and support (34.1%), (2) digital teaching (16.3%), and (3) quality and student dropout (11.2%). There is a negative relationship (−0.35) between the first and third components. Despite the availability of digital tools, the rate of teacher use (mean 3.23) is lower than the usefulness of the tools (4.09). Higher-quality education in urban areas appears to have a strong tendency to drive student migration from rural areas (median: 3.73). Conclusion There are three main challenges: weak systemic communication, low use of digital tools, and quality assurance that results in migration to cities and abroad. These conclusions require strengthening communication, digital teacher training, and improving the quality of rural schools. Contribution/Originality This study makes a significant contribution by identifying the negative correlation between systemic communication and student dropout rates. This finding suggests that enhancing communication among local government, school management, and parents could effectively reduce dropout rates. Moreover, in providing empirical support for expectancy-value theory, this study highlights that the perception of value toward local schools is a crucial factor in student retention.</ns5:p>