Addressing rural school dropout

Today's children are our tomorrow's future. So, we need to bring them up in a way that they can become human resources. For this, they must have formal education in their childhood. However, dropping out from educational institutions has been a problem all over the country for a long time. This problem is more acute in rural schools. Although education is the basic right for every child, education facilities differ between rural and urban societies. Dropout from school is a major barrier to eradicating illiteracy in Bangladesh. The enrolment rate is now a hundred per cent, but half the enrolled learners drop out of education before completing the primary cycle.

On the other hand, children in cities are way ahead in education. Also, education rates are relatively higher in these areas. The children of rural societies are deprived of a number of facilities. So, their dropout rate is increasing day by day. After being dropped out of schools, most of these children resort to child labour. The main reason for this is the unawareness of the village guardians. They do not want to invest in their children's education. Rather, they want their children to start working as early as possible. Many of these children abandon schools in their primary education and start doing risky jobs with their fathers.

One of the main reasons behind increasing dropout rates in rural educational intuitions is child marriage. For a number of reasons, young girls are married off in between their primary and secondary education and become full-time workers in their in-laws' houses. Poverty, illiteracy and a lack of awareness are some of the key reasons for the high rate of school dropouts in our rural society. The authorities concerned must wake up now and start working against high dropout rates in rural educational institutions.

Abdullah Almamun,

Student of Department of Sociology,

Jagannath University, Dhaka,

[email protected]