Karnali, April 2 (RSS):Chief Minister of Karnali Province Raj Kumar Sharma has said that education, as the source of skilled human resource, is foundation of economic development of the society. Unveiling the ‘Annual Status of Education Report (ASER), Karnali 2023 at Birendranagar, Surkhet on Saturday, he also expressed concern that the education system in the country was not yet technology-friendly. For a radical change in education system, the government at all three levels should work both at the policy and management level. Likewise, Chief Secretary of Karnali Province Government, Dr Gopi Krishna Khanal, said that although the access of children to schools has increased the standard of learning is not as much as expected. “Gender equality and the number of students have increased but students are still weak in mathematics and science”, he said. At the programme, representative of Galli Galli, a civil-society organisation, Rajiv Timilsina, presented the data on the basic learning level of Nepali, Mathematics and English subjects of five to 16 year old children of various local levels in Karnali. On the occasion, Chairperson of Dungeshwar Rural Municipality, Dailekh, Sundar Kumar KC and Chairperson of Siddhakumakh Rural Municipality, Bharat Giri, said that the information obtained from ASER Nepal’s research will help the local governments to plan for the improvement of the educational sector in the future. The ASER is a citizen-led assessment or CLA methodology to assess the literacy and numeracy learning of all children aged 5-16. The ASER has been carried out in one sample local level each of five districts of Karnali province under the ‘South Asian, Assessment Alliance: Communicating and Collaborating for Change’ since 2022 through sample survey method, said Karnali Province coordinator of ASER Nepal, Lalitjung Shahi. —