Deadlock over education programmes

A number of priority programmes in the education sector set to be implemented during the outgoing fiscal year (FY) are encountering difficulties, posing uncertainty over their implementation at all in the future. Some of the programmes, though looked ambitious to be completed within the period, did raise expectations from relevant quarters. And now that these are far from being materialised, one has reasons to be sceptical whether follow-up of these programmes would result in any move in the next fiscal.
In fact, some of the programmes, prioritised for the education sector by the finance minister in his previous budgets, have still remained confined to paper works, while few others are moving with very little progress.  Establishment of a permanent education commission, modernisation of madrashah education, setting up of child-friendly learning centres at remote areas like chars, haors and tea gardens, expansion of e-learning facilities in schools, inclusion of the jobs of more than one hundred thousand primary school teachers under the revenue budget have been some of the major tasks meant to be put in place during FY 2014-15. Besides, numerous development projects for construction of schools and colleges are also reportedly in a shambles. Over fifty per cent of the work for developing physical infrastructure of 3,000 non-government secondary schools and construction of academic buildings for 1,000 non-government madrassahs are still incomplete.
Setting up of a permanent education commission to provide direction to the country's education system in meeting the emerging challenges in the fast changing world is indeed a call of the hour. Forming the commission would have been a nice starter to count on. But it is not certain whether the government still considers it a priority task, because the primary works for it have not yet been initiated. Besides, sluggish implementation of the development projects under the ministry of education is found responsible for little progress in improving the quality of education. Delayed disbursement of funds is often attributed as the main reason for slow progress.
The government, in recognition of the alleged indiscipline and the much talked-about mismatch in the standards and curriculum of the private universities, was to establish an accreditation council to monitor their performance and compliance. Mushroom growth of the private universities all over the country with virtually no monitoring as to their standards has been a cause for concern for quite sometime. This should have been looked into, and redressed through effective monitoring of the accreditation council. But there is no noticeable move yet in this direction. Also, modernising the madrashah education - a long-awaited job to make it practical need-oriented and rewarding in the job market - remains far from materialising. The government, despite its repeated pledges to this effect, has, wilfully or not, let it slip off its priority agenda.
A good number of the development programmes announced by the government and taken up as priority projects under the annual budgets in the past years, were basically aimed at harmonising the standard of education across the country. The objective was more precisely to remove the urban-rural disparity-a malady so widespread in recent times. But shelving the programmes or taking them up only half-heatedly has only added to the deterioration of the situation. Greater attention is warranted in the next fiscal.