Analysing education spending
Saturday, 10 November 2007
Enayet Rasul
Members of a family at the grass roots of existence from Gopalganj in the Faridpur district were in the office of the Dhaka Reporters Unity to draw attention to murder and demand justice . The father of the slain person narrated in details how his son was killed by the hired goons of the local school headmaster. He had to give his life at the hands of hired assailants as he protested the misappropriation of stipend money by the headmaster under the female secondary education project at a high school in Gopalganj . Allegedly, the headmaster had used his power and influence or spent money to get the case diverted to CID police and was also tried other means to cover up the crime. Besides, the headmaster and his gangs were accused of threatening to similarly wipe out other members of this family for their tenacity in demanding justice.
The above incident is not an isolated happening. One must not think that perhaps incidents of misappropriation of stipend money are few in number. It may not come to murder in most cases but it should be fairly easy to identify many such cases of misappropriation of education funds by following up newspaper reports over a period of time, say one year. The government has been progressively expanding the stipend programme at primary and secondary level out of a hope that the same would create the incentives among guardians to enrol their children in schools in greater number and keep them there to regularly go on receiving the stipend money. But what happens in many cases to such stipend money is symbolically shown by the above tragedy.
No finance minister in the last decade and the present one failed to stress, while presenting the national budget, that the highest allocation in the budget had gone into education or to announce yet higher allocations for education than the previous year. But the nation has a right to know what good things have been achieved from such higher and higher spending on education. The taxpayers certainly have the right to know whether their tax monies are being spent as these should be in the education sector. It does not seem that no government, so far, has cared to receive an honest feedback on the utilisation of resources in the education sector. If it had, then it would probably be shocked into taking corrective measures long ago to stop the drain of precious resources.
As it is, the realm of primary, secondary and higher secondary education is shot through with pervasive corruption. Guardians are to admit their children free of costs in the government run primary schools. But admission to these schools is managed in many cases by underhand payment of money, according to guardians. Most of the private primary, secondary and higher secondary level educational institutions receive generous grants from the government as salary support to their staff. Government's contribution as salary support come near to eighty per cent of the salaries. But a large number of the recipient institutions of the government's monthly payment orders (MPOs) are sunk deep in corruption. There are fake teachers in their payroll, i.e. teachers in existence in paper only but not in real life. The management of these so called educational institutions regularly receive the government disbursed amounts as salary support to these ghost teachers only to line their own pockets. Clearly, it is futile policy to pump more and more resources into a sector without realising whether the higher spending of resources is justified or not or without knowing whether the greater spending is making the desired positive impact or not.
A country like Bangladesh can justify increased spending on education to show that the same is helping to create human resources. Human resources are created in institutions such as engineering colleges, medical colleges, polytechnics, vocational schools and colleges, engineering universities and agricultural universities, specialised educational institutions such as the ones that impart education and training on leather technology, food processing technology, etc. But the government's spending over the years to build such institutions in the last two decades have been meagre . The number of such institutions that can actually add to the pool of human resources for the country's economic growth and development, have remained almost static over the years.
There has been no investment of public resources to increase their number notably. However, there has not been seen any shortage of funds in this period to help the coming into being of many new madrashas ( religious schools) and extension of government's financial assistance to these madrashas to produce prayer leaders. But prayer leaders are not the ones who can fill the needs of ones with technical and vocational education for an economy aspiring to grow. Thus, efficiency and vision are not seen in the allocation of resources for the education budget.
Government has opened up higher education to private investment. But the opening up has not been matched by regulation to ensure the quality of privately offered higher education. Thus, 53 private universities have cropped up in the country. But the standard of education in them , except a few, falls far short of the expected standard. In the absence of their proper regulation, these institutions are giving out certificates of dubious value and human resources for the country's various needs are not being created by them. Experts say that government's regulatory actions to put pressure on the private universities to conform to guidelines, discourage concentration of these so called universities only in areas of business studies and humanities to the exclusion of science and technology, formation of an accreditation council to watch over these institutions and ensure their proper development, have been long overdue.
It is imperative for the government to immediately take a stock of what value it is getting out of the highest sectoral spending on education from resources in the national budget. Such stock taking and actions following must include identification of corruption and steps to remove the same, an accountability structure so that management of educational institutions feel the pressure to work towards imparting better quality education, a complete recasting of curriculum at different levels to make the same practical in nature or oriented to meet the needs of a diversifying economy and, more significantly, altering allocation patterns in the education budget to favour greater investment in science and technology education, technical education, vocational education, management education and specialised education to meet the requirements of the emerging sectors of the economy. The lion's share of the education budget will have to be spent with a farsighted view to create the real human resources for the country's short, medium and longer term requirements and not generalists or prayer leaders who are now being created in abundance because of the aimless spending on education.
Members of a family at the grass roots of existence from Gopalganj in the Faridpur district were in the office of the Dhaka Reporters Unity to draw attention to murder and demand justice . The father of the slain person narrated in details how his son was killed by the hired goons of the local school headmaster. He had to give his life at the hands of hired assailants as he protested the misappropriation of stipend money by the headmaster under the female secondary education project at a high school in Gopalganj . Allegedly, the headmaster had used his power and influence or spent money to get the case diverted to CID police and was also tried other means to cover up the crime. Besides, the headmaster and his gangs were accused of threatening to similarly wipe out other members of this family for their tenacity in demanding justice.
The above incident is not an isolated happening. One must not think that perhaps incidents of misappropriation of stipend money are few in number. It may not come to murder in most cases but it should be fairly easy to identify many such cases of misappropriation of education funds by following up newspaper reports over a period of time, say one year. The government has been progressively expanding the stipend programme at primary and secondary level out of a hope that the same would create the incentives among guardians to enrol their children in schools in greater number and keep them there to regularly go on receiving the stipend money. But what happens in many cases to such stipend money is symbolically shown by the above tragedy.
No finance minister in the last decade and the present one failed to stress, while presenting the national budget, that the highest allocation in the budget had gone into education or to announce yet higher allocations for education than the previous year. But the nation has a right to know what good things have been achieved from such higher and higher spending on education. The taxpayers certainly have the right to know whether their tax monies are being spent as these should be in the education sector. It does not seem that no government, so far, has cared to receive an honest feedback on the utilisation of resources in the education sector. If it had, then it would probably be shocked into taking corrective measures long ago to stop the drain of precious resources.
As it is, the realm of primary, secondary and higher secondary education is shot through with pervasive corruption. Guardians are to admit their children free of costs in the government run primary schools. But admission to these schools is managed in many cases by underhand payment of money, according to guardians. Most of the private primary, secondary and higher secondary level educational institutions receive generous grants from the government as salary support to their staff. Government's contribution as salary support come near to eighty per cent of the salaries. But a large number of the recipient institutions of the government's monthly payment orders (MPOs) are sunk deep in corruption. There are fake teachers in their payroll, i.e. teachers in existence in paper only but not in real life. The management of these so called educational institutions regularly receive the government disbursed amounts as salary support to these ghost teachers only to line their own pockets. Clearly, it is futile policy to pump more and more resources into a sector without realising whether the higher spending of resources is justified or not or without knowing whether the greater spending is making the desired positive impact or not.
A country like Bangladesh can justify increased spending on education to show that the same is helping to create human resources. Human resources are created in institutions such as engineering colleges, medical colleges, polytechnics, vocational schools and colleges, engineering universities and agricultural universities, specialised educational institutions such as the ones that impart education and training on leather technology, food processing technology, etc. But the government's spending over the years to build such institutions in the last two decades have been meagre . The number of such institutions that can actually add to the pool of human resources for the country's economic growth and development, have remained almost static over the years.
There has been no investment of public resources to increase their number notably. However, there has not been seen any shortage of funds in this period to help the coming into being of many new madrashas ( religious schools) and extension of government's financial assistance to these madrashas to produce prayer leaders. But prayer leaders are not the ones who can fill the needs of ones with technical and vocational education for an economy aspiring to grow. Thus, efficiency and vision are not seen in the allocation of resources for the education budget.
Government has opened up higher education to private investment. But the opening up has not been matched by regulation to ensure the quality of privately offered higher education. Thus, 53 private universities have cropped up in the country. But the standard of education in them , except a few, falls far short of the expected standard. In the absence of their proper regulation, these institutions are giving out certificates of dubious value and human resources for the country's various needs are not being created by them. Experts say that government's regulatory actions to put pressure on the private universities to conform to guidelines, discourage concentration of these so called universities only in areas of business studies and humanities to the exclusion of science and technology, formation of an accreditation council to watch over these institutions and ensure their proper development, have been long overdue.
It is imperative for the government to immediately take a stock of what value it is getting out of the highest sectoral spending on education from resources in the national budget. Such stock taking and actions following must include identification of corruption and steps to remove the same, an accountability structure so that management of educational institutions feel the pressure to work towards imparting better quality education, a complete recasting of curriculum at different levels to make the same practical in nature or oriented to meet the needs of a diversifying economy and, more significantly, altering allocation patterns in the education budget to favour greater investment in science and technology education, technical education, vocational education, management education and specialised education to meet the requirements of the emerging sectors of the economy. The lion's share of the education budget will have to be spent with a farsighted view to create the real human resources for the country's short, medium and longer term requirements and not generalists or prayer leaders who are now being created in abundance because of the aimless spending on education.