New Curriculum Piloting Starts Without Primary
Masum Billah :
Teaching in 62 secondary and madrasa using new books on new curriculum has started from 22 February leaving the same for primary school students thought it was in the initial planning and it is an integral part of introducing new curriculum. NCTB says new experience based learning and assessment process has come into being in the place of 60 years old education system. In short, primary, secondary and higher secondary education of Bangladesh will enter into a new age.
That seems melodramatic to me as without starting even piloting, we have started beating the drums. First of all, let the piloting finish successfully and on the basis of its success things should start in the mainstream. When real success appears after doing it in the mainstream for several yeas, only then we can put such comments. We know NCTB planned to start piloting in grade one and six. However, things could not have been done as the Primary and Mass Education Ministry probably did not cooperate with the whole affair as per the plan. The required amount of allocation did not come to NCTB from the ministry either as the newspaper reports said. Different newspaper reports and electronic and social media leak out the news that the Ministry of Primary and Mass Education does not go well with NCTB that has caused long late to start piloting primary curriculum. It is even heard that the ministry did not allocate the required amount of money to NCTB and so they could not develop books on new curriculum let alone pilot the books. It indicates that the books of primary section based on new curriculum may go to the students next year. In grade six there are 13 books and all the books except Bengali were developed on the basis of experiential learning approach. Due to time constraint, all the books of the entire year would be distributed in three phases instead of distributing them at a time.
Education minister says about new curriculum, “It is our expectation that the students will not only gain knowledge, they will acquire skills side by side, develop proper outlook and values pursuing new curriculum. They will become skilled manpower and human beings combining all these qualities. They will gain the ability to think independently, their world of thoughts will widen, they will be able to apply in their gained skills in practical life and address problems.” She further says “tryout of new curriculum has started in selected educational institutions after distributing books on new curriculum among these institutions. These books have been developed after a long research and much effort of the teachers and curriculum experts. She invites opinions from the teachers and educationists to accommodate their feedback in the new books to be introduced from the year 2023.”
A special committee has been formed to develop and modify the new curriculum. One member of this core committee who happens to be a teacher of IER, DU says “roughly several positive and innovative aspects appear in the new curriculum that will push the learners to learn not only in the classroom but also at home, surroundings of educational institutions and from the society at large promising to banish the traditional way of assessing the learners’ performance. Evaluation does not necessarily mean examination with pen and paper. Parents, guardians, the people concerned of the society and peers will evaluate the students instead. Examiners of four layers will determine how much skill a learner has acquired by the comments ‘ very good, good, satisfactory and needs to learn more’. Considering this perspective, NCTB hopes that there will be no mad rush or unhealthy competition among the learners for occupying first or second position in the class. All these sound very soothing but many questions arise. How many parents will be able to look after or assess the development of students? Even if they do it, how many subjects they will be able to look after. Is it possible for the guardians and parents to evaluate the subjects like Bengali, English, Social Science, Religion, Mathematics, Agriculture, Arts and Crafts etc. How these subjects will be evaluated by the parents, guardians, social people living around students. When professional and experienced teachers find it difficult to teach these subjects effectively, how the evaluators mentioned above will assess the performance of students in various subjects.
Moreover, how often they will evaluate the learners, how their evaluation will affect the entire evaluation process must have been well explained and designed in the curriculum. Only thoughts and dreams cannot implement the dreams of new curriculum. When our teaching learning situation, evaluation and the entire gamut of education sees anomaly and devaluation, how far these soothing words and hatching dreams redress the ills education sector has experienced so long years?
(Masum Billah is Country Director-Volunteers Association for Bangladesh and President: English Teachers’ Association of Bangladesh).
