Local Curriculum: Meaning, Need and Development Process

Every place in Nepal has something of its own. In one village most families farm and keep animals. In another, pottery, weaving or woodwork has been handed down for generations. Somewhere else, tourism and homestays are growing. The national curriculum is written for students across the whole country, so it cannot cover the special knowledge and skills of every village and town one by one. A separate curriculum is made to teach this place-specific knowledge, skill and technology, and that is what we call a local curriculum.

A local curriculum is not brought in from outside. The local stakeholders, meaning the people and organisations who have a real interest in the schools of that place, can build it themselves around local content, according to their own needs. While it is prepared, special attention goes to the needs of the community, the interests of the learners, the learners' age, and the resources and means available in the area. For example, where a community forest lies near the school, forest protection and identifying medicinal herbs are easy to teach, because the resource for learning is right there in the village.

A local curriculum does two big jobs. First, it helps connect local knowledge, skills and technology to national and international markets. If students in a weaving area learn the craft properly at school, the goods made with that skill can be sold across the country and even abroad. Second, it makes teaching and learning practical and useful for life, because students study what they already see at home and in their village, and they can put it to work straight away.

The National Curriculum Framework for School Education, 2076 BS, sets aside separate time for the local curriculum. The lower grades get a little more of it than the higher grades:

So every student from grade 1 to grade 8 gets a fixed amount of time each year to study subjects tied to their own place. What is taught in that time is decided at the local level.

The responsibility for preparing and carrying out the local curriculum belongs to the local level, that is, bodies such as a rural municipality or a municipality. The local level identifies local needs and develops the local curriculum and textbooks. Taking the structure of the national curriculum as its base, it adapts the curriculum to local conditions, revises the content when needed and measures what students have learnt. The finished local curriculum is approved by the province or the local level. Once it is approved, the school is the one that takes it into the classroom.

Nepali society is full of variety. It has different languages, cultures, occupations and landscapes. Because a local curriculum is based on local knowledge, skills and technology, it represents this variety and also helps meet local interests and needs. Its main needs are these:

• (a) To make the content of the curriculum relevant
• (b) To turn the idea "Think globally, act locally" into something real
• (c) To build the curriculum with the participation of local stakeholders
• (d) To promote educational decentralisation
• (e) To make the curriculum up to date, relevant, flexible, balanced, open and democratic, in keeping with local values and norms
• (f) To help protect and promote local values and norms
• (g) To raise the capability of stakeholders and institutions at the local level
• (h) To promote important local festivals, arts and crafts special to the place, occupations and cottage industries

These eight needs are easier to hold in mind as three groups. The first group is about the quality of the curriculum itself: making the content relevant, up to date, flexible, balanced and open. The second group is about participation and power: involving local stakeholders, educational decentralisation, which means that decisions about education are not kept only at the centre but reach the local level, and building up local institutions. The third group is about culture and livelihood: protecting and promoting local values, festivals, crafts, occupations and cottage industries.

Local stakeholders take part both in making the local curriculum and in carrying it out, and it is filled with content that meets local needs. A local level can follow several steps when it builds its curriculum. The main steps are:

• (a) Identifying the needs
• (b) Setting the objectives
• (c) Selecting the content
• (d) Setting grade-wise learning outcomes
• (e) Deciding the teaching process (activities and methods)
• (f) Evaluating students
• (g) Allocating time

When the fifth step, the teaching process, is worked out in detail, it has two sides: the educational materials a lesson needs, and the teaching methods and activities. So each of them is explained separately below.

Many kinds of people must be involved when a local level builds its curriculum, because no single person can see all the needs of a place. Those to involve are:

• Intellectuals
• Social workers
• Industrialists and traders
• Parents and teachers
• Representatives of government and non-government organisations
• Representatives of the local level

With the help of these people and other local stakeholders and organisations, the content of the local curriculum is chosen. While choosing, it must be made certain which topics can actually be taught at the local level. The information collected is then prioritised with the help of experts, so that it is clear what comes first and what comes later. Topics already in the curriculum made by the Curriculum Development Centre are not repeated. Only the content that is missing for the local level is selected.

An objective says what change should appear in students after they study the curriculum. The general objectives of a local curriculum are set so that they match the objectives or competencies of the basic education curriculum, which keeps the local curriculum in line with the national aims. Objectives are also set to promote the traditional occupations and skill-based knowledge common in that area. In a place known for bamboo craft, for instance, one objective could be to preserve and develop the skill of making bamboo goods.

Once local needs have been identified, the content is chosen on that basis. Next, the order of priority among the topics is fixed. After the priority is set, the objectives are settled and the chosen content is elaborated, which means a broad topic is spread out into smaller lessons that can actually be taught. For example, a broad topic such as local food could be broken into local grains, traditional dishes, ways of cooking, and cleanliness in the kitchen.

Learning outcomes are set for each grade on the basis of the general objectives and the content. This is where it is decided how much, and what kind of, subject matter is taught in which grade. While setting the outcomes, equal attention must go to the students' age and to their physical, mental and psychological development. Naming the local fruits is a fitting outcome for a grade 2 child, but working out their market prices suits only a higher grade.

The educational materials needed to meet each lesson's objective must also be decided. Since the content is local, the materials should also be available locally. They should cost nothing or very little, and they should be easy to use. An old rice-pounding tool from a home, farm tools, local soil, seeds, bamboo, or samples of the village's own handicrafts are good examples of such materials.

The curriculum must state effective teaching methods and activities for running teaching and learning. Local subjects are learnt best by working with the hands, not only by reading. So activities such as these are chosen:

• Learning by doing, such as planting seeds in a kitchen garden
• Learning by seeing, such as observing a cottage industry in the village
• Demonstrating, such as showing the class something one has made

Arrangements should also be made to invite local resource persons to take classes. When an experienced farmer, craftsperson or folk singer from the village teaches, students learn the skill straight from someone who knows it.

Evaluation is based on the nature of the subject taught under the local curriculum. In this curriculum students learn by doing things themselves, by observing and by taking part, so a written exam alone cannot measure what they have learnt. At the basic level, priority goes to continuous student assessment, in which a student's progress is followed through the whole year. The tools of evaluation can be:

• Classwork
• Project work
• Participation
• Observation

In the last step, time allocation, it is decided how much time each topic gets in each grade. All of it is fitted within the limit the national framework has set aside, which is 160 hours a year in grades 1 to 3 and 128 hours a year in grades 4 to 8.

Suppose many families in a rural municipality keep bees, but the younger generation is slowly giving up the skill. That rural municipality could build a local curriculum like this:

• Identifying the needs: talks with parents, beekeeping farmers, teachers and traders show that beekeeping should be taught.
• Setting the objectives: to preserve and promote the traditional skill of beekeeping.
• Selecting the content: kinds of bees, caring for a hive, how honey is taken out, and selling honey.
• Grade-wise learning outcomes: in a lower grade, naming the parts of a hive; in a higher grade, working out the income from selling honey.
• Teaching process: use an old wooden hive from the village as material, visit a bee farm to observe, and invite an experienced beekeeper as a resource person.
• Evaluating students: count an observation diary from the bee farm as project work, and include class participation in continuous assessment.
• Allocating time: share out time for the beekeeping lessons in each grade within the yearly hours set by the national framework.