Kathmandu, May 20 -- In 2016, school enrollment campaigns across Nepal celebrated a historic milestone when 1,053,824 children proudly registered for grade 1. Ten years later, during the Secondary Education Examination (SEE) administered in March-April 2026, that group had dwindled to just 430,667 students.

According to data from the Education Ministry, a staggering 623,157 children-amounting to 59.14 percent of the original group-disappeared from the formal school pipeline over the decade. This drastic dropout rate means fewer than 41 percent of primary school entrants managed to complete their secondary education on schedule, exposing critical cracks in the state's multi-billion-rupee educational infrastructure.

To compound the crisis...