Expert for redesigning PTIsto ensure quality education

All the country's Primary Training Institutes (PTIs) need to be redesigned with new curricula and innovative methodologies to ensure quality primary education, according to an educationist. "Training facilities for the school teachers should also be increased to improve the quality of education," said Prof. Dr M Alimullah Miyan, founder and Vice Chancellor of the International University of Business, Agriculture and Technology (IUBAT). In an interview with UNB on the sidelines of the World Innovation Summit for Education (WISE2011) in Doha, he said the number of teachers and training institutes should be increased in the country alongside strengthening the capacity of the training centres. "All the PTIs should change the approach of training.all the teachers should be trained with new methodologies. The PTI instructors should also be trained about the new curricula," he said. Prof Dr Miyan, also a WISE participant from Bangladesh, said it is a great challenge to reform PTIs, change their training curricula and produce new PTI instructors. "Even then, the PTIs have to be overhauled to train the teachers with new methodologies." He said almost all the primary schools in Bangladesh suffer from the shortage of teachers as number of students is growing fast. "Students suffer when some teachers go on leave." Prof Mian went on: "So, we need a reserve pool of teachers to work when others are on leave." He suggested that classrooms in primary schools should immediately be expanded to accommodate the rising number of students." "Some positive aspects in our education system are that we have been able to make a gender balance in the country's primary and secondary schools, and there's high coverage in primary education. And the number of female students is on the rise. Dr Miyan, also a former Professor and Director of the Institute of Business Administration (IBA), Dhaka University, said Bangladesh has been able to achieve the gender parity in the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) and this has been possible through providing children scholarships, female scholarships and incentive schemes. "The good thing is that no government has changed this issue (priority to education). Instead, each government has reinforced it," he said, describing the trend as a good sign in for Bangladesh's political culture.