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Physics in Nepal

For four weeks in the summer I visited the Kathmandu University High School in Dhulikhel, Nepal, to help set up their first year of A Level teaching. KUHS is an independent, fee-paying school, so is well equipped by Nepali standards, but of course has nothing like the resources of Clifton. Despite the 27kg limit on luggage, I took lots of laboratory equipment to share, along with software, some books, and other items I hoped would be useful in teaching AS Physics.

The school has teaching six days out of seven, as at Clifton. This left Saturdays free for exploring the area around Kathmandu: visiting temples, museums, etc. Working days started before breakfast, with practical or theory lessons all morning, and planning or lab work in the afternoon. Much of the equipment we needed had to be brought from some distance away, owing to the difficulty in finding items such as wire, soldering irons, and even simple things like aluminium foil or a glue gun. The lack of resources was at first slightly frustrating, but rapidly became an interesting challenge.

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The teachers were all Nepali, led by a Scottish Head Master. The pupils were mostly local, except for a few international students. Everyone spoke English: in fact speaking Nepali on campus was against the rules, showing the importance the school placed on language and international integration. The very basic facilities meant that some improvisation was required in meeting the syllabus. Instead of a vacuum pump, a "wine saver" was used to demonstrate pressure. Instead of proper protractors and rulers, I printed them out from the internet onto acetate sheets. At every point in planning the experiments and in teaching I was thinking "how can we get this idea across using available resources, with less money, yet still in an interesting way?"

The teachers at KUHS were tremendously cooperative, and we soon organised visits to half a dozen local schools to find out what equipment they had and how they taught Physics. The answers were in some ways depressing – one school had a few batteries, a couple of microscopes, a box of fossils and some wires. Another had seventy students in a science class. The behaviour of the pupils was excellent though: with so many young people in one place, there was no room for disruption.

Over time we decided on a sensible order in which to teach the curriculum, based on what was available in Dhulikhel. Some lessons had to be put back whilst we waited for items such as spring balances or masses to arrive. Several potentially interesting lessons were hastily moved owing to the monsoon or a lack of classroom space (and on one occasion due to local superstition about the eclipse). Time and again I was reminded of the ease of appropriating teaching resources back home, and frequently I kicked myself thinking "if only I had brought ... with me!"

The links we formed between KUHS and the other local schools allowed us to set up a science teachers' club, where schools will pool their equipment and loan each other important items which would otherwise be hard to get. They also shared ideas for teaching Physics on a tiny budget. The effect of this will hopefully be to allow more practical teaching to take place in a country so short of money and resources, but with so many enthusiastic teachers and such hardworking pupils.

Alex Hasthorpe
Upper School Physics

30 September 2009

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