Henri Fayol is popularly known as the founder of administrative management for his contribution to the field of management. Although his principles of management are termed as classical management theory, the principles are still applicable in the field of management. In this paper I explore the issues of management and ownership in two private schools in Nepal using Fayol's principles of management.The data were collected from two private schools using a case study approach. I conducted semi-structured interviews with teachers, administrators and principals of two private schools. In the case study schools, the owners were also working in the capacity of principal of the school and hence the term owner/ principal has been used in this paper. The owners/principals were taken as the participants to represent the voice of the employers while the teachers were taken to represent the voice of the employees. Similarly, the administrators in this study represent the voices of both the employer and the employees of the school.This study suggests that when management and ownership are not separated, there is a concentration of power. The power concentration in individual or group of owners gives rise to a number of management related issues such as unequal distribution of authority and responsibility, role ambiguity, negative motivation and conflict of interest. Fayol's principles of authority and responsibility, initiative, subordination of individual interest to group interest, stability of tenure of personnel and spirit of cooperation have been used in this paper to explain several issues of management and ownership that emerged from the case study.

Nepal experienced political change from absolute monarchy to constitutional monarchy in 1990 and finally to a republic in 2008. These changes in the political climate were followed by subsequent change in the educational policy as the incoming regimes tried to incorporate its ideology in the educational policy. This paper analyses the role of teachers’ unions in the educational reform in Nepal since the 1990s with special focus on private schooling context. This paper draws information collected through qualitative interviews with teachers, administrators and principals of two private schools in Kathmandu, the capital city of Nepal. It also uses documentary sources including newspaper articles and other documents related to private schooling in general and teachers’ unions in particular. This study found that teachers’ unions in the context of private schools in Nepal are still struggling for survival due to lack of support from the stakeholders of private schools.

The Education Act 1971 is the main policy document under which schools in Nepal are operated. With the change in political regime, this policy has been amended as per the ideology of the incoming regime. Although private schools started to show their influence in Nepal in the late 1980s, excessive growth of private schools began with the neoliberal policy adopted by the incoming political parties soon after Nepal became a multiparty democratic country in the early 1990s. However, with the Maoists becoming a dominant political force in the country in the late 1990s, several challenges in the operation of private schools began. Issues such as closing down or monitoring of private schools are now common mass media headlines. This paper analyses such a situation in the operation of private schools in Nepal. It uses primary sources of data collected via semi-structured interviews with teachers, administrators and principals of two private schools located in the capital city of Nepal, Kathmandu. It also uses secondary sources that include mass media output and other documentary sources such as documents from private schools’ associations and government policy related to private schools. This study found that operation of private schools in Nepal is comparable to what Michel Foucault calls tolerated illegality.

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