Non-formal education must exist to remove illiteracy

No significant government activities are seen to make about four crore people – school dropouts and illiterate adults – as the Bureau of Non-Formal Education has been sitting idle with no project to provide access to learning opportunities to those people since July.

The 162 staff members of the bureau are sitting idle and engaged in administrative routine work.

The primary and mass education secretary, however, said that the BNFE could not depend solely on NGOs to run its activities.

Educationists blamed the lack of coordination between formal and non-formal education systems and the absence of flexible and holistic formal education for the situation.

Bangladesh Sample Vital Statistics 2022 shows a literacy rate of 76.8 per cent.

As per the statistics, 23.2 per cent of the population, or about four crore are illiterate, the survey shows 17.17 crore the number of the population.

Every year 10-12 lakh students drop out of primary schools. The government established the bureau in April 2005 aiming at removing illiteracy.

Under different projects, mostly funded by the government and some by donor agencies, the bureau used to provide children aged 7-14 years with basic lessons under a shortened syllabus for Class I-V.

Besides literacy, the people under the projects were also imparted basic technical knowledge for use as life skills.

The bureau had two recent projects – Out of School Children Education Programme and the Basic Literacy Project.

The Out of School Children Education Programme, which was a part of the Primary Education Development Programme 4 and had been implemented by 54 NGOs since 2019, ended on June 30, 2023.

The bureau has had no educational activities since June 30 with the end of the Out of School Children Education Programme, under which 8.17 lakh of the targeted 10 lakh children completed learning until Class III.

The ministry sent a proposal to the Planning Commission in the past week for the extension of the Out of School Children Education Programme until December.

Experts said the bureau had different curricula and infrastructures for non-formal education which became a burden for the ministry.

Instead of merging non-formal education with formal education, non-formal education itself becomes a parallel system causing the current problem.

As literacy is a core national priority, a non-formal system must exist.