Buddha Ma Vi School

Namaste,

Perched on the hillside at the edge of the village of Phillim, Buddha Ma Vi Secondary School is the most northerly secondary school in the Manuslu area of Nepal.  Many students at the school have to stay in the hostels there, as their homes are too far away for them to be day pupils. There are 170 boarders living in 4 hostels. The homes of some of these students are two or three days walk away from the school, high in the mountains, and so they only go home for holidays.

Pupils from the village walking into school.

There are over 400 students in total attending the school, aged from three or four in the ECD class (Early Child Development) through to 47 students aged 16 who will take Secondary Education Exam in the spring. Last year the school had impressive results with 100% pass for this government exam. These students were all able to continue their education at colleges in Gorkha, Pokhara or Kathmandu, but as this is very expensive, most students needed scholarships from outside sources.

Morning assembly before lessons start.

One of the girls hostels.
About 35 girls and 2 teachers live in this one.

Many of the teachers at the school have homes several days walk down the valley, in Gorkha or even Kathmandu. They live up in Phillim during term time, only going home for holidays. In Phillim they live at the school along with the boarding students.  This means that the teachers are always with the students; they work, eat and sleep alongside them, with no time of their own.

The school buildings were designed and built by a Japanese charity in 2008, and since the earthquake of 2015, this Japanese NGO has carried out repairs and rebuilding to damaged classrooms and hostels. There is still the girls toilet block, another student hostel and the teachers hostel to rebuild this year.

Students have slept in this corrugated iron shed since
the earthquake in April 2015.

Three male teachers still sleep in this tent.

The roof and part of the wall is missing on the girls toilet block

Some male teachers are still sleeping in a tarpaulin emergency tent, and the female teachers have to share the girls hostel. Some students are sleeping in temporary corrugated iron sheds.

The girls toilets have a large hole in the wall, and is half full of rubble but are still in use, two and a half years after the earthquake! In autumn 2016 all boarding students were still sleeping in emergency tents erected outside the classrooms in the school grounds, so good progress at rebuilding and repair has been made in the past year.

Outside the primary classrooms.

The school is built of local stone and is of dry-stone wall construction. As well as 4 hostels there are at present 11 classrooms, a store room, office/staff room and a large circular dinning hall. The school building won an award in 2009 after building, for the best new stone building that year.

The circular dining building

This is the kitchen where food is cooked for
170 boarding students

Student being served vegetable curry for supper.

As is usual in Nepal there are almost no resources in the classrooms, except for a whiteboard and desks and chairs. This furniture is more modern than in many Nepali classrooms, but some of it is broken or damaged. There are no displays on the classroom walls, no charts, posters or learning support materials.

Most teaching is done by rote, as is common in most Nepali schools. The teacher stands at the front of the class and frequently reads or says the information to be learnt, which the students repeat in chant mode, sometimes with little or no understanding. Everything has to be learnt by heart.