Strongly criticizing the government's less budgetary allocation for education, policymakers and experts on Thursday emphasised giving the highest priority to education for attaining the desired level of economic development.
However, they identified low quality of education and teachers, poor financial and institutional management, moral degradation of teachers, inadequate and unorganized vocational education programmes, high dropout of girls at higher secondary level due to social insecurity, lack of skilled workforce, and high rate of child marriage as the major impediments to human development in the country.
These were noted during a consultation meeting on 7th Five Year Plan (2016-2020): Chapter 6: Human Development Strategy, organised by General Economic Division (GED) of Planning Commission at NEC conference room in the city.
Education Minister Nurul Islam Nahid was present as the chief guest, while Planning Minister AHM Mustafa Kamal chaired the meeting.
Primary and Mass Education Minister Mostafizur Rahman and State Minister for Finance MA Mannan were present as the special guests.
GED Member Shamsul Alam presented the keynote paper in the programme.
AHM Mostafa Kamal said there is no alternative to education. There is scarcity of teachers, and the quality of teachers is very poor, for which the faulty system is responsible.
Citing the examples of Singapore and Jamaica, he said with the same population, Singapore invested in education, and Jamaica in tourism, industries and other sectors. Now the result is known to all.
"We do not have adequate teachers, and they do not get proper training. But quality of education should be ensured from primary level, impact of which will be seen at secondary and higher secondary level."
He blamed poor quality of teachers for the present degraded education, and announced to bring high quality teachers to Bangladesh to provide quality education.
Nurul Islam Nahid said the government has increased allocation by only Tk 550 million in the budget, showing the excuse of poor quality of secondary education, while allocations of many other ministries have been increased by even Tk 85 billion.
He also said there are only 119 public secondary schools, and the rest 30,000 schools are in private sector. Those who do not get other jobs, join as teachers in those schools. That is the reason behind the poor quality of teachers.
Mr Nahid said there has been a revolution in technical and vocational education sector in the country, which has jumped to eight per cent from the previous one per cent.
"I will take this percentage to 20 per cent by next eight years," he added.
President of Board of Trustees and Founder Vice Chancellor of East West University Professor Mohammed Farashuddin said higher education in the country is very expensive, which is higher for parents of the students in the private universities and higher for the government in the public universities.
The universities hardly have any resources of their own, which is about 50 per cent in India and Pakistan. Dhaka University has only 9.0 per cent own resource of its total budget outlay.
"We earn $15 billion remittance, and send $4.0 billion to other countries as we hire a large number of foreign workforce. Then what are we teaching at various departments of our universities and what type of workforce are we developing?"
Students pay minimum tuition fee at the public universities, which should not continue any more. The budgetary allocation for education sector is mostly paid to the MPO institutions as salary, he added.
Former caretaker government adviser Rasheda K Chowdhury said the government has been constructing Padma Bridge with its own fund. But the allocation in the main bridge of developing human capacity - education - has been shrinking frustratingly. The government has included a huge number of schools in MPO, but there is no reflection in the allocation.
She also said the government has allocated Tk 120 billion for health sector, but Tk 160 billion for armed forces.
The primary education minister said the government has failed to attain the desired target in education quality. But the teachers are not that incompetent, rather it is due to their lack of commitment.
Speakers said there are various skill development institutes and vocational training centres in the country, but without any transparency about their outcome and activities.
There should be a clear indication on providing training to nine million youths, and what should be the target, input and output, and specific interventions, which were absent in the 6th five-year plan.
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