Bangladesh Secondary Education Still Lags In Quality Functioning

As per the analysis of Global Partnership, the cost of per secondary student is 10.2 of our GDP which is 16.82 in India, 15.2 percent in Pakistan, in Malaysia it is 22.97 and in Singapore 22.22 percent. We get this picture from Education Sector Analysis for Bangladesh conducted by UNESCO Institute of Statistics. Bangladesh lags extremely behind the five countries in terms of per head expenditure in secondary education. We cannot but agree that the education of Bangladesh has seen tremendous expansion in her fifty years of independence though it has not happened in a planned way, particularly in the secondary level. In the last fifty years several thousand secondary level educational institutions have been given approval but all of them in the non-government sector. So, no uniform rule has developed in this sector because of its being non-government. But secondary education is the backbone of education. We know, there lies a managing committee to run the non-government secondary educational institutions which is known as SMC that stands as a great barrier to maintaining the quality of education as local influential people and political leaders become the members of these committees who hardly think of monetary benefits and showing muscle power rather than contributing to disseminating quality education. It was thought through the participation of local people a sound education can be ensured. However, things have proved otherwise.
Many schools cannot recruit required number of teachers due to financial crisis. Quite a big number of teachers teach in the classroom without having any basic training of teaching pedagogy and subject based training. Even though only a single training in life does not ensure the quality teaching, still it is considered important to be familiar with the base teaching pedagogies. Teachers have to gather knowledge, attend seminars and symposiums, read books and other education materials, conduct research on their students and situations to develop them professionally. Interestingly, nothing of these things happens practically and effectively that contributes to ineffective and modern teaching in the classroom in most of the cases. Some schools have been nationalized in the name of developing quality that in no way talks about the true process of developing quality of education. Because of this unplanned process, no famous schools have been established after five decades of our independence and the base of education is still remaining weak. We usually consider the quality of education by counting the number of students sat for public examination and the number of students pass and in some cases GPA-5 holders. When the entire education management and system sees problem, only the rate of pass or GPA does not or cannot talk about the quality of education. It has become an open secret matter that students today cannot fail as they are awarded marks whatever they write in their scripts and when they write something, they hardly fail.
In spite of all these odds, several famous educational institutions prove their worth by virtue of their own management, tradition, process, and teachers’ dedication students gain some basic knowledge, some pragmatic skills, that are not available in other educational institutions. Examples of these schools can be made – Saint Gregory’s, Vicarunnessa, Holy Cross, Motijheel Boys School, Azimpur Girls’ School. The tradition, environment, fame and teaching process of these schools develop students differently. Similarly, Khastagir, Collegiate School, Ispahani and Muslim High Schools of Chattogram were established before the birth of Bangladesh. In the district level Zilla Schools were also built before the independence.
Primary is the base of education system and secondary is the backbone. Unfortunately, our secondary education has been run without any sound plan and investment in this sector seems haphazard and so the outcome does not come accordingly. Sound atmosphere is a must to develop quality educational institutions. Only a few of such model institutions have been established but they are confined only to the city of Dhaka, not beyond it. The latest statistics according to BANBEIS the number of secondary schools in Bangladesh is 20 thousand 179 and out of them fully government are 683 that means only 3 parent secondary education is managed by the government and the rest in the non-government sector. Besides more than nineteen thousand five hundred secondary schools are non-government and more than six thousand secondary madrasas (Dakhil) as well work in the country.
Secondary education suffers a lot due to wrong and inappropriate investment and plan. The non-government schools don’t have trained teachers. According to the latest BANBEIS report the number of teachers working in secondary schools is two lac 52 thousand 505, among whom B. Ed. BPA and M. Ed training received by one lac 67 thousand 652 teachers. That means 85 thousand teachers still teach in the classroom without any training and this number stands 33.6 percent of the total teachers. Moreover, non-government schools cannot employ required number of teachers due to fund crisis. Government schools also see teacher crisis due to lengthy and critical teacher recruitment policy. Education expenditure of the guardians is also higher in non-government schools. A big chunk of students drop out of school because of being unable to pay this high tuition fee. The highest number of drop out students is in the secondary level that is 45 percent as the newspapers say recently. Eight causes have been identified for this dropout. Displacement of the family, destruction of education materials, parents’ inability to bear educational expenses, helping parents in the household work, getting engaged in income generating and lifesaving works, having no interest in education, feeling insecurity to go to schools, transport problems. In respect of boys, 17.15 percent and girls 17.56 percent either help their parents at home or start earning bread. 16.30 percent boys and 17.27 percent girls don’t go to schools due to natural calamity and 10.97 percent boys and 11.22 percent girls don’t go to schools due to problematic situation in the transport. Both the groups don’t find any interest in education. All these examples tend to say that secondary stage of education has seen no appropriate attention from the authorities concerned that has weakened this layer. We need to bring about a real and positive change here.

(Masum Billah is Country Director, Volunteers Association for Bangladesh and President- English Teachers’ Association of Bangladesh).
Masum Billah