Kathmandu, June 27 -- The Education, Health and Information Technology Committee of the House of Representatives is struggling to finalise the school education bill, as cross-party lawmakers remain deeply divided over provisions to regulate private schools.

While most of the ruling party lawmakers want the privately owned schools to continue to operate in the way they are doing, opposition lawmakers are pushing to make them service-oriented. At Thursday's meeting, opposition leaders strongly stood for mandatorily converting the schools registered under the Company Act into trusts by allowing them a few years to transition. But most ruling party lawmakers argued that such a move should be voluntary.

The provision relating to regulating p...