Edn ministry fails to control coaching centres

For a long time, the conscious section among the guardians as well as the citizens in general has being talking against the ubiquitous growth of coaching centres and the education ministry banned coaching centres as it was alleged that through coaching centres the public exams questions paper is leaked, the fact is a whopping 85 per cent of the students of classes VIII and IX in the country’s both urban and rural areas depended on private tutors or coaching.

During the closure of educational institutions in Covid-19 pandemic this occurred, finds a study of the Education Watch. During this period students’ dependence on guidebooks has also increased. In figures, 79 per cent of the primary and 82.5 per cent of the secondary students used guidebooks.

Even several decades back, there was no coaching centre in Bangladesh. But students used to go to private tuition for such science subjects as math, physics, chemistry and biology as well as English and occasionally Bengali. But now no subject is left: students go for learning all arts and commerce subjects.

As a result, the importance of classroom teaching in the country as a whole has diminished. It has been alleged that some school and college teachers have become so materialistic that they force their classroom students to come to them for coaching by not helping/favoring in the institutional class promotion exams.

The students of poor parents are bearing the brunt of this practice. On the one hand, they cannot afford to go to coaching centres because it involves substantial cost, on the other hand they are being deprived of classroom teaching as teachers neglect their teaching duty there.

Everybody in Bangladesh talks about raising the quality of education, but no effective step has been taken so far in this regard.

The education ministry takes decisions against coaching centres and guidebooks, but on the ground there is no or very little impact is found. While it remains a challenge for the government to enforce a ban and bring a social movement against coaching centres, it must also take pragmatic steps so that the students can make up the learning losses during the Covid-19 pandemic.