A Nepali mother of two has found herself attending school alongside her son after returning to the same education system she fled at just 15, when she eloped with a man seven years her senior.

Parwati Sunar now studies in seventh grade in Punarbas, her village on the south-western edge of the Himalayan nation.

"I enjoy learning and am proud to attend with classmates who are like my own children," she tells Reuters.

Around 57 per cent of women are literate in the country of 29 million people, and the 27-year-old Ms Sunar says she hopes to become "literate enough" to be able to keep household accounts.

"I think I should not have left my school," she says, explaining the desire to catch up on the lessons she missed, having had her first child at 16.

"I feel good to go to school with mum," says her son, Resham, 11, who is a grade behind his mother.

"We chat as we walk to school and we learn from our conversation," he says, adding his mother hopes he can become a doctor.

As a student, Ms Sunar was below average but a keen learner, says Bharat Basnet, principal of Jeevan Jyoti School.

Her day begins at dawn in a tin-roofed two-room structure of bare bricks.

She shares the space with sons Resham and Arjun and her mother-in-law, with their goats penned into one area.

They work in the verdant fields around it, and make a cake for a smiling Resham, who celebrates with a hibiscus flower tucked above one ear.

Ms Sunar's husband works as a labourer in the southern Indian city of Chennai to support his family.

They belong to the Dalit community, formerly known as untouchables, on the lowest rungs of the Hindu caste system, but Ms Sunar says the family faces no ill-treatment over this.

"No one discriminates against me or my family," she says.

After a simple meal of rice and lentils, Ms Sunar puts on the school uniform of light blue blouse and skirt with a striped tie.

It's fun to be in the same class with Ms Sunar, says Bijay BK, one of her 14-year-old classmates.

"Didi is pleasant," Bijay says, using the Nepali term for an elder sister.

"I help her in studies and she helps me too."

Ms Sunar's efforts could inspire village women thirsty to learn beyond their domestic horizons in Nepal, where they still face discrimination and child marriage is widespread, even though illegal.

"She is doing a good job," says one of her neighbours, Shruti Sunar, who is in the school's 10th grade, though not a relative.

"I think others should follow her and go to school."

Enrolment of girls in basic education, or grades 1 to 8, is 94.4 per cent, official data shows.

However Federation of Community Schools president Krishna Thapa says nearly half dropped out for reasons ranging from lack of textbooks to poverty.

"Schools lack infrastructure, such as toilets for girls," Mr Thapa adds.

"Most girls drop out during their period because there are no toilets."

But Ms Sunar, who gave up a job as a housemaid in neighbouring India to return to her studies, is determined to finish the 12th grade.

"This is the thinking now," she adds.

"What lies ahead, I don't know."

Reuters