Bangladesh has one of the largest primary education networks in the world and over the last few decades, there has been significant improvement in the sector including enrolment and minimising drop-out rate. However, challenges lurk still in ensuring proper infrastructure and quality education.
With over 16 million children, aged between six and ten years, and enrolled in over forty thousand schools across the country, this is obviously a giant operation. Social awareness, free books and free tuition facilities have done the miracle of pulling such a great number of children into the schools. These initiatives have been remarkable so much so that many other countries in the world are now trying to follow the Bangladesh model.
While things are encouraging with the numbers, it is time to stress on the aspect of quality. For many reasons, the quality of primary education cannot be rated as good. The key factor is the teachers who lack training, motivation and skills. Another important factor is the lack of appropriate infrastructure.
Talking about the teachers, their role should be the most significant in grooming the children at such an early stage. The state of the teaching learning process or the pedagogical stream is still dependent on rote learning and not on creativity and fun-learning. Not to blame the teachers, they have not been facilitated with access to trainings of modern teaching methodology and techniques.
The profession of primary school teaching does not also provide any attraction and therefore, lowly qualified personnel or people with low skills run into these jobs. The government tries to help the situation through the MPO (Monthly Payment Order) system but this does not cover the entire gamut of the primary teachers.
The MPO system is good as financial benefit for the teachers but it lacks the credibility to ensure quality of service provided by the teachers. Currently, it is serving about 0.4 million (4.0 lakh) teachers in non-government primary and secondary schools, colleges and madrasahs across the country. Indeed, financial support is the biggest stimulus to enable the teachers to devote to the expected service.
According to the UNICEF, about 24 per cent of our primary teachers are not trained. This is an important point to ponder. There are enough structures to provide training to the primary school teachers but these are hardly used. There is also a significant gap in finding qualified and dedicated trainers.
A major hurdle for smooth primary education flow is the dearth of proper infrastructure. There are many schools in the rural vicinities where two or three classes are taken simultaneously by multiple teachers in the same room. This situation is not acceptable; it can be solved through Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) programmes of many industrial concerns.
Another big impediment for the primary school learners is the lack of proper health and nutrition. Better health is a prerequisite for better education. As poverty has a big thaw in the rural areas, parents are unable to provide sufficient nutritional food to the children. Once again, big corporations and charitable organisations should come forward to address the issue.
Primary education is the base that develops the foundation of any child. Our focus should be to help the child grow with blossoming faculties to experience life, nature, realities and all earthly aspects. The teachers need to have that capacity and mindset to shoulder that holistic responsibility. The learning environment also needs to be appropriate.
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