Salle is in Eastern Nepal. It takes a slow and winding 10 hour journey from Kathmandu on the local bus to travel the 180 km to get there.

Salle Village School was a primary school, but has been upgraded to a middle school, largely thanks to the villagers themselves and the odd trekker who helps out with donations. Only primary education is free in Nepal. Secondary education is only available to those who can pay for private education.

The school has some 180-215 pupils, depending on who is there on the day. Sometimes children have to stay at home maybe to help out with younger siblings, to do chores or take part planting or harvesting crops. However, generally parents are very keen for their kids to go to school.

The village is about half a day's walk from Jiri, which anyone who has been to Nepal knows as the trailhead for the trek to the Khumbu region and Mt. Everest. Even if you haven’t visited Nepal, you might know that the traditional route for early climbers to Everest was to trek in from Jiri.

Salle is about 1800 metres above sea level and nestles in a fold in the huge tangle of ridges between Jiri and the regional administrative town of Charikot. Somewhere between 70 and 100 families live in the village and the surrounding valley. Jiri is the local market where some of the villagers sell their produce. Many of the male villagers work as porters, but also go to India to work and trade whatever they can.

Salle has been developing links with a small group of people in the UK who have visited the village or have been trekking with some of the villagers. Together we are supporting the development of Salle School.

The village school has 6 classes and 6 teachers. All the teachers are Nepali Government trained. A friend remembers asking Shyam, the school’s headmaster, how long it takes a Nepali teacher to train. After much preamble and sucking in of breath, it was announced that a Nepali teacher is trained for as much as a month before he is qualified to teach. They also have to have been good pupils themselves, and have passed all Nepali Government Exams. The Government wage for a primary/middle school teacher is 15,000 rupees a year (about £150). This is not enough to live on, even in Salle.

The Government pays for 3 teachers in the school, and the villagers themselves scrape together the wages for another 3 teachers. These 'villager paid' teachers are former pupils of the school who have had a bit of secondary education and who have done the month's training.

Headmaster Shyam has for a long time wanted to provide some secondary education, lessons taught in English, to the children of the village who are inevitably growing up. A few children get to go to private secondary schools courtesy of funding from people in the UK, but for the majority, there is nothing.

Carole, a friend of ours who lived in Salle for 6 months and helped out as a teacher at the school, has recently raised the money needed to build a large room in addition to the 6 existing classrooms. This new room is to be for the secondary class, class 7.

Rising Brook Secondary School in Stafford have developed links with Salle School and have just raised enough money to pay the wages for a secondary school teacher for 2 years. Secondary school teachers, because they are usually trained in India, or are Indian or Filipino themselves, earn 30,000 a year or 3,000 a month (£30)

It looks as though Headmaster Shyam's dream may be coming true. We need to ensure that if this is a success that it continues for longer than two years of course, but it's a good start.

We want to raise money for another secondary school teacher and 'enhance' the wages of the three 'villager paid' teachers. Because wages are so low, there is a temptation to go to Kathmandu rather than stay in Salle and teach the children.