Inclusiveness, the missing link of our education system

As a child one of my most favorite readings was "Dustu Cheler Dol" (Naughty Boys Group) by Md. Zafor Iqbal. The central character of the story is a boy named Bilu who had to drop out from school and work to support his family.  Did I realise that I was being exposed to the harshest fact of our educational system when I read that story? The answer is ‘no’. It was beyond my ability to fathom the gravity of the problem. Bangladesh has made wonderful achievement in the educational sector in last two decades. Our total enrollment has become 18 million in 2012 from 12.6 million 1991.We successfully reduced gender disparity, attained MDG targets in stipulated time but if you ask, have we established a system that upholds the value of inclusiveness in its perfect form? The answer is 'no'. In fact our educational system is far from being inclusive.
So what do we mean when we say 'inclusiveness of education'? In plain simple language, inclusiveness means every child irrespective of their financial, physical or social condition will have equal access to education that will provide them with support to develop and opportunity to participate in every activity that takes place within the system. An ideal educational system will have the ability to adapt to the need of every child. So when a child cannot attend a school because of poverty the educational system fails to be inclusive. If a child with special need stops going to school because the building does not have a toilet that he/she can access the system becomes non-inclusive and when a student who has a non-Bangalee mother-tongue drops out because she cannot keep up with the Bangla curriculum, the system is called anything but inclusive. Government is taking initiative to improve the quality of education, building new schools, setting up multi-media class rooms, introducing JSC and PSC exams to improve competency of the students, but when it comes to inclusiveness of education the initiatives are more in theory than practice.
According to government report, overall dropout rate at the primary level is 29.7% which is a sharp improvement from year 2010 (39.8%). A variety of factors force the students to dropout from schools; poverty, unsatisfactory performance, physical distance etc. No matter what the apparent cause is, in reality our educational system is the one to be blamed. It is evident that we did not build a system that has the flexibility to adapt with the special context of the students.
Let's take the situation with the specially-able children who has equal right to be in a school as a regular child. But are we respecting that fact properly while we are designing our policies? According to Bangladesh Primary Education Annual Sector Performance Report 2012, approximately 118,575 (59.6%) students out of 197,158 with special ability are enrolled in different types of schools around the country. Even in cases where we have addressed the physical accessibility issue very few of our teachers are getting special training to handle specially-able students.
Then there are children of ethnic minority whose mother tongue is not Bangla. The discrimination against them starts from the very beginning through application of the general Bangla curriculum. Finally, there are urban slum children, street children, those who are working, children born in brothel has very limited access in formal educational system, neither there are much initiatives to incorporate them.
The NGO sector is working tirelessly for a long time to minimise some of these gaps and provide education to those who are left out. There are about 740,000 students studying in schools or centres either managed directly by BRAC or through small partner NGOs. Complementing mainstream school systems with innovative teaching methods and materials, BRAC Education Programme opens primary schools in communities unreached by formal education system. Apart from regular primary schools BRAC also integrated specially-able children through establishing Children with Special Need unit and initiated innovative approaches such as Boat School for Char and Haor( hard to reach) areas. BRAC Education for Ethnic Children unit has developed a non-formal teaching model in order to meet the needs of indigenous children, who do not speak Bangla. These are few of the initiatives to mend our porous educational system.
Providing education service to one the largest primary student body is a gargantuan task, especially for a developing country like ours. It is only through collaboration among government, private and development sector these problems can be resolved. The reason why 'Dustu Cheler Dol' was my favorite book is because it has a very positive ending. In the end Bilu was offered a scholarship from the school for his bravery and continued his education. Let us build an educational system where every Bilu gets to go to school, let us build a system that can proudly say every child counts and we are leaving none behind.

The writer is Senior Policy Specialist, Advocacy for Social Change, BRAC