Ensuring quality primary education for all

Developed countries in the world are still investing more on education to continue their envious progress. These nations realised the importance of education earlier than other developing countries like Bangladesh. They knew that investment on education certainly brings highest returns in the long run than investing on other sectors. So, education and only education is the most valuable sector for investing more to get significant return for attaining sustainable development in Bangladesh. If education is identified as the body of humans then its heart must be primary education. As smooth blood circulation is necessary for keeping heart more activated, so quality primary education is mandatory to strengthen basis of primary education. Therefore it is inevitable for the government of the country to keep smooth provision of ensuring quality primary education for all of its children. Considering the importance of primary education, government has done a lot to develop primary education in Bangladesh and still positive efforts regarding this continue. Government nationalised all primary schools in 1973 and again in 2013 government nationalised all categories of registered, non-registered and community primary schools. Both the decisions were courageous for cementing basis of country's total education system to build the nation suitable for overall development.
Government is supplying free books to all children at primary and secondary schools and ensuring reaching these books on first day of the year.  Government is providing stipend to the poor but meritorious students in all primary schools. School feeding programme was launched into selected schools to remove malnutrition and keep children stay attentive during school time. Primary teachers are provided short-run and long-run training both home and abroad just to develop their skills in teaching. New primary schools are established in the villages where primary schools are absent. Government has taken initiatives as part of regular activities like setting up new school buildings, reconstructing/ repairing of existing buildings, constructing additional classrooms, ensuring toilet and tube well facilities, supplying desk benches and furniture to schools to make congenial school climate for children. Government is encouraging underprivileged children and disabled children to ensure their access to primary education by providing support through projects like ROSC, Sishu Kalyan Trust (SKT) as well as ensuring all sorts of facilities. Government is also arranging "Inter Primary Schools Sports and Cultural Competition" and "Bangabandhu and Bangamata Gold Cup Primary School Football Tournament" for primary school boys and girls as the part of co-curricular activities. Even developed countries never think of providing such sort of free support to their primary children year after year. It is only Bangladesh that took revolutionary initiatives to bring all of its school going children into primary schools to ensure them quality education. As a result of government's direct intervention, we could bring exemplary change in this sector. We brought  school going children into schools, reduced students' five years dropped-out rate and increased regular attendance. We also achieved success removing disparities among boys and girls in all indicators of primary education. Significant success happened in the Primary Education Completion Examination (PECE) as percentage of passed students.
Despite involvement of huge investment in primary education, still we are miles away from our desired target of ensuring quality primary education to each and every student. We badly need to achieve the prime target of reaching quality primary education to every student by any means. If necessary we should bring revolutionary reform or change in existing system of primary education to ensure quality. Otherwise, we will destroy our future generation who can build a developed Bangladesh. Government may consider the following initiatives to ensure quality primary education for each and every primary school children.
Teachers' sincerity and dedication mostly depend on benefits that they receive. Government needs to increase teachers' salary and other allowances considering their professional importance and social status. Government may think of paying different lucrative salary according to educational qualification of teachers to bring highly qualified teachers in this noble profession.  At the same time they should be brought under more accountability. Reviewing schools' overall performances as well as students' performances in PECE and Annual Assessment, government may provide benefits like time scale, selection grade, promotion, foreign training, additional increments etc as incentive.
Government should not compromise to encourage highly qualified professionals to come as newcomers in primary teaching. Government may think of seeking applications for appointment of new teachers only from candidates who have additional diploma degree in primary education or good  educational qualifications suitable for modern day primary teaching.
Primary teachers definitely need to be skilled, innovative, creative, motivated and sincere in performing their duties (teaching-learning). To make quality teachers, quality trainers and academic supervisors are must. So, Primary Teachers' Training Institute (PTI), Upazila Resource Centre (URC) instructors as well as Assistant Upazila Education Officers (AUEO) need to be more skilled and more academic. There may be regular provision for PTI and URC instructors and AUEOs appearing for an aptitude test to determine whether they are fit for teaching/supervising teachers or not. Those who are not qualified may be sent for receiving training for development or may be engaged for administrative works. Upazila Education Office and Upazila Resource Centre should work together under same supervisory authority so that they have good cooperation and coordination only for developing teachers' quality and implementing proper utilisation of teachers' skills in classroom teaching. At URC there may be regular activities of arranging very short period subject wise training for teachers who have weaknesses in teaching or problem solving. These subject based weak teachers will be identified by AUEOs. These training programmes will jointly be organised by UEO and URC as additional training activities.
Quality primary education mostly depends on quality teaching-learning process in the classroom. So, primary teachers should have the mentality of accepting and using modern day teaching-learning method. They need frequent training.
Academic supervision might be introduced mandatory for Head Teachers, AUEOs and URC personnel. District and Upazila Education Officers (DPEO, ADPEO and UEO) may be given the responsibility of school inspection.
Teachers' performance should be monitored only by trained academic supervisors. There should not be any scope of monitoring teachers' performance by non-academic persons.
Duties and responsibilities of teachers and School Managing Committee (SMC) might be target oriented. There may be annual target for each primary school in the areas of enrollment, regular attendance, repetition, drop out, GPA point wise success in PECE, students' performance in annual assessment, community involvement in academic, infrastructural development of school etc. Reviewing target wise progress, teachers should be rewarded or punished and tenure of SMC should be extended or not.
Most of the primary schools are situated in the rural and hard to reach areas with lesser geographical and communication facilities than urban schools. But almost two thirds of our primary teachers are females. At present there is no mandatory transfer policy for primary teachers. So, a teacher of a rural primary school has to work year after year in the same school. But all teachers are getting same monetary benefits under uniformed salary structure. As a result teachers of rural schools become frustrated and feel monotony. So, government may think of providing rational amount of conveyance allowance, food allowance and other allowances for rural teachers and hard to reach areas' primary school teachers. In each rural school there may be the corner of child care facilities for rearing up female teachers' kids during school time. If possible government may review transfer policy. After a certain period teachers of hard to reach schools must be transferred to urban schools. But political parties should come to a consensus not to interfere teachers' transfer and administrative actions. Rather public representatives and politicians should ensure smooth running of schools.
There might be a ladder for primary teachers to get promotion to the higher posts to remove monotony and disinterest. The posts like Assistant Upazila Education Officer, Upazila Education Officer, District Primary Education Officer, URC and PTI Instructors and PTI Superintendent may be filled up by giving promotion to the qualified teachers. To make it a success, existing appointment rule may be amended.
Primary teaching is very hard and technical one. Since primary teachers are working with kids with different characters, therefore they need to exhibit more patience and attention in the classroom to involve all the kids in teaching-learning process. So teachers should be given recess after a class to prepare them for next class. Therefore minimum number of teacher in a school should be six. If possible there may be the post of ICT Assistant in schools so that head teacher and assistant teachers may be engaged mostly for academic development of school.
School environment should be child-friendly so that children consider school a place of joy. It becomes possible by ensuring neat and clean toilet facilities (minimum two), availability of safe drinking water, play ground with adequate sports items, suitable size of classrooms with sufficient light and air and sufficient number of classrooms.
The children who get stipend may be given two sets of school uniform from the "Stipend for Primary Education" project. Mid-day Meal or School Feeding Programme might be introduced in all schools with the support of donors, local elites, NGOs, local public representatives etc.
Last but not the least, Primary Education Board (PEB) may be set up immediately in seven divisions to make PECE result more transparent and credible. Moreover, before introducing 100% creative questions in the examinations, teachers also need to be presenting creative method during teaching-learning activities. All teachers should know the skills of creative method questioning. They also need to know techniques of evaluating answer papers so that students' merit is evaluated properly. PEB can take the responsibility of developing teachers' skills on creative method teaching, questioning and evaluating.
Email: auparbayazidkhan@gmail.com