Talks of quality of education

We often hear that Bangladesh's businesses are suffering for a dearth of quality hands, especially technically sound people and mid-level management personnel, when hundreds of thousands of youth including graduates are coming to the job market every year. 'Poor' quality of education, mostly at the secondary level, is often blamed for such a national crisis. Still, some people contest the claims of low quality education although Bangladeshi universities are not ranked among the top quality educational institutions around the globe.

Such debates only delay the process of addressing the quality crisis. No nation did prosper without good public education and we too cannot dream of achieving a prosperous country without properly educating our people. Let's first accept that quality of education has not been optimum at the very least. There are thousands of high scoring students when knowledgeable people are not available in our surroundings. Also, we have not been able to attain 100 per cent literacy rate as yet. We should understand, without education proper, we will not be able to draw what is widely called demographic dividend, for being blessed with higher percentage of young population at this point in time in history. So, we think, every actor in our society, from the government to teachers, from guardians to other stakeholders, should campaign for providing our children with quality education for building a better future of Bangladesh.

Mohammad Fahim,

Maghbazar, Dhaka