Masum Billah :
To remove the heaps of irregularities developed in the field of education for so many years, an urgent, a middle-term and long-term plan need to be taken by the interim government.
As the duration of the interim government is not certain, it cannot be expected from them to banish all the rubbish stored in education.
However, they can take some immediate steps to redress some areas while some middle- term steps can clean some rubbish during their tenure and a long-term plan they can put forward as suggestions for the elected government.
We have apprehension that the party government may not take necessary steps which will prove beneficial for real change in education; rather they will give priority to their party or alliance’s interest as we experienced from the previous government.
There is an urgency to provide an instruction from the ministry of education circulating what the secondary level students will do just now and in the rest months of the year 2024.
We know, all the educational institutions were declared closed on 17 July due to turmoil during the quota movement.
The country experienced a new dawn on 05 August and at night on the same day ISPR released an order to open educational institutions from 06 August.
Accordingly, secondary schools and also higher secondary colleges were opened but the presence of the students remained thin till 11 August and on 14 August primary schools have opened.
According to the new curriculum, students were taking an ‘evaluation test’ that also got stopped in the middle of its running.
Since the reopening of schools’ students, teachers, guardians and school authorities have been in doubt what would be the so-called new curriculum that has fully killed the spirit and desire of study of students putting them into holding some utopian ideas to acquire some competencies in each subject area.
All efforts regarding the new curriculum unfolded till today proved farce and wrong.
The evaluation test which started from 03 July and was planned to end on 03 August proved absolutely a farce.
All the students of a class gathered in a particular room who were asked to do something in group.
Only 5-6 percent of students got somehow engaged in that activity and the rest were engaged otherwise. Teachers found it difficult to manage those students.
Finally, all the students copied the same thing looking at the scripts of 5-6 percent students’ task.
That means, students got the message that they don’t need to read books, go to class and take any sort of preparation for the examinations.
It was totally a funny game for them.
They now know that evaluation means they will have to gather in a room and share the answers prepared by several students.
They need not do any presentation as was planned.
They need not touch the textbook or do any activity by the guidance of their teachers.
Teachers are still confused about what to do with the scripts the students submitted after the so-called evaluation test.
In the light of this practical phenomenon lying in the field of education, the ministry of education should give an order to stop the curriculum and the so-called evaluation test and other related activities.
They should announce two dates of written tests, mainly half yearly and another one annually, following the books developed on the principle of this curriculum.
And the testing items to be selected like the previous curriculum i.e. true/false, question-answer, completing, writing paragraph, describing important points etc.
And from January 2025 the old books of 2022 can be introduced as teachers are familiar with those books and testing items. Immediately the new government should do it otherwise students are remaining idle.
They just spend their time doing irrelevant work.
Students, teachers, guardians and schools are fumbling in the dark about whether the curriculum the previous government wanted to introduce by force will continue or they will get relief from it.
The sooner it will be done, the better.
Over ambitious, impractical and complicated curriculum must be changed to give relief to the students, teachers and guardians and all concerned as it has already ruined the entire landscape of education.
Then a nationwide survey should be conducted on the students of primary and secondary level to learn their level of skills and competencies they are supposed to acquire following the new curriculum.
It might be like the National Student Assessment run by the Directorate of Primary Education.
This NSA type assessment will help determine what kind of assessment system needs to be introduced in the coming days.
The writer is President of English teachers Association of Bangladesh (ETAB).
(He taught in cadet colleges, Rajuk College, worked as Chief of Party in BRAC Education and Country Director-VAB Bangladesh) Email: [email protected]
