Education and corruption

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Governments here in succession have been found to be saying that they remain totally dedicated to spreading primary education and retaining the greatest number of the young ones in schools. But the realities belie such claims. That is one of the greatest ironies in Bangladesh.
The statistics on primary school drop-outs and other media reports do also tend to substantiate the allegations about incidents of many stipend receivers not getting the money the government earmarks for them regularly through the education budget. However, the results of this public examination at the end of primary education up to class V under the new education system do otherwise indicate a substantative change in education. This is borne out by the pass-out rate and GP grading outcomes. To what extent this improvement is in quality and expansion of primary education, right down to the rural areas may, however, still be debated.
Primary schooling in government schools has been made practically free of costs and generous stipends are there for children who do not drop out and continue their studies in the secondary level. The free schooling and the stipends should have created enough incentives to expand enrolment and reduce the drop out rate to a very low level. But such positive developments are yet to deliver the expected results because of, what many close observers note, the chute of corruption, through which the resources for primary and secondary education go down, to a considerable extent.
In many government-run schools, specially the ones located in rural areas, school children or their guardians have not even heard of stipends or lack the confidence to demand the same in the face of powerful groups. In many cases, the students are asked instead to pay regularly or irregularly sums of money to keep their names in registers and for them to be allowed to sit for examinations.
Clearly, the reaching of targets at the primary and secondary level of education calls for immediate actions on the part of the government to flush out the corrupt ones from the schools to ensure that public money is actually well spent on the education of underprivileged children.
In this context, the results of this year's second-stage public examination on completion of education up to class VIII, under the new education policy, provide some disconcerting developments. Though the pass-out rate has been maintained at an otherwise un-impressive level, the scoring of marks, obtained by those who come out successful in the examination, as are judged by their grading, does serve as pointers to the fall in quality of education, particularly in the non-urban areas.

Raqibul Hasan
Khilgaon Chowdhuripara
Dhaka