Flood-Hit Schools Across Central Nepal Struggle to Resume Classes

Schools ravaged by recent monsoon flooding across central Nepal are struggling to resume classes, clear debris, and trace hundreds of unaccounted-for students, local education authorities and administrators said.

In Rasuwa, devastating river swells washed away entire schools and severed road connections. Durga Prasad Silwal, chief of the district's Education Development and Coordination Unit, told Gorkhapatra that four institutions—Ramchandra Basic School, Malika Basic School, Chipleti Basic School, and Modern Trinity Boarding School—were completely swept away, with initial ministry assessments showing their sites unusable for reconstruction. Silwal noted that around 250 students across the district remain out of contact, while road and bridge damage in Langtang and Syaphrubesi has prevented classrooms from opening.

Other schools in Rasuwa have converted facilities into temporary residential hubs to resume teaching. At Nilkantha Secondary School in Uttargaya Rural Municipality-5, classes resumed after teachers escorted 33 displaced students back across the Betrawati pedestrian bridge to live in the school hostel, Annapurna Post reported. Headteacher Madhav Prasad Lamichhane said 330 of the school's 506 registered students have returned, but 71 children remain missing following late-monsoon disasters.

In neighbouring Nuwakot, six schools suffered irreparable destruction and four were partially damaged, according to Surya Bahadur Khatri, head of the district's Education Development and Coordination Unit. Khatri told Gorkhapatra that repair works and temporary learning centres are being established. At Tribhuvan Trishuli Secondary School in Trishuli Bazaar, where floodwaters swept away the main campus, makeshift teaching finally resumed three weeks after the disaster, headteacher Rajendra Dawadi told BBC News Nepali.

In Dhading's Galchhi, Bageshwari Secondary School shifted older students into an unfinished adjacent structure after floods wrecked its primary building, headteacher Gyanu Thapa told Gorkhapatra. Thapa said younger children have stayed home because parents remain fearful of further flooding from the nearby Trishuli River.

Downstream along the Narayani River in Chitwan, floodwaters inundated the National Basic Primary School in Bharatpur Ward 1 between September 24 and 27, coating classrooms in thick sludge, The Kathmandu Post reported. Headteacher Shanta Adhikari said teachers and some of the school's 120 pupils have been forced to shovel out hardened silt themselves after local municipal agencies and the army failed to dispatch clean-up personnel, leaving parents anxious as the Dashain break approaches.