The students pay Tk 238 as examination fees, which is Tk 94 more than the official rate.

On an average, students of government schools pay Tk 1168 annually on different counts while those at non-government schools pay Tk 1797.

These were revealed in a survey done by the Conscious Citizens' Committee affiliated with Transparency International, Bangladesh (TIB). The findings were made public at a view exchange meeting held at a hotel in Sylhet city yesterday.

The TIB report said the standard of secondary education is very poor due to private coaching by teachers, lack of accountability and sincerity of teachers.

Sylhet Citizens' Committee chief EU Shahidul Islam chaired the meeting while former treasurer of Shahjalal University of Science and Technology (SUST) Prof Abdul Aziz was the chief guest.

Dr. Tulshi Kumar Das, head of the department of Social Works at SUST, TIB's MM Morshed, Karuna Kishore Chakravarty and Mahfuz Ul Alam also spoke.

A number of school teachers, NGO men, guardians and journalists were also present at the meeting. The TIB survey covered 316 households in 50 villages.

The report said money is excess was collected from students on different pleas at various occasions. In addition to excess tuition fees, money was collected for examination, re-admission, tiffin, development work and social and religious festivals.

Fifty-eight per cent of students surveyed said they were not given documents against payments except for tuition fees and examination fees.

Seventy-four per cent guardians alleged that their children did not get sub-stipends on the plea that they did not fulfill conditions but they did not know what were the conditions.

Science faculty students had to pay Tk 54.5 in excess for practical examinations.

Only 39 per cent of guardians said they were satisfied with English coaching at schools while 44 per cent were satisfied with mathematics. Only 40 per cent were satisfied with the over all standard of education in schools.

The citizen's committee presented some suggestions to overcome the situation. These include steps to stop private coaching, dropping teachers and school management committee members appointed on political consideration, making an appropriate pay structure for teachers, introducing ACR for teachers, freeing schools from clutches of local influentials and bringing them under a single administration, setting up of upazila level education offices and raising allocations for development of schools in rural areas.