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Education Policy 2009 - where do we stand? Good governance and the education sector BBLT-Integrating three different strands EIS: Innovation in method of teaching Innovations in education: BRAC experience Quality education: GSS model Community role in promoting education UCEP - transforming underprivileged children into productive human resource Anandya Niketon: An inclusive school Of education that humanizes Quomi Madrasa: Time to remove the stigma The imperatives of science education at all levels Education administration and management: Present status and future approach State of public universities in Bangladesh Private and public universities: Are they delivering? The state of higher education and the need for improvement Campus politics: Whys and why nots Leadership training in Bangladesh Of a language that binds Re-imagining the teacher
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Education Policy 2009 - where do we stand? Manzoor Ahmed
How have the comments on the draft, which must have been voluminous, given high public interest on the subject, reviewed, analysed, and if appropriate, incorporated into the draft? And who were charged with this responsibility? This would be a fairly tricky task which would call for technical expertise, political insight, and an acumen in exercising judgment. Will the revised draft be placed before the public before it is adopted? Will it be presented to the parliament for discussion and approval? Will the two parliamentary standing committees on education, jointly or separately, have public hearing on the draft policy? Again it is not known what the plans are and what approach the government intends to take. The highlights of the education policy recommendations, (regarded as draft, until the government decides what it wants to do with it) - on the whole well-received by academics, researchers and stakeholders - are indicated below. Universal education up to grade 8 One-year pre-primary education and primary education extended to grade 8 should become universal within the next decade. The historically evolved reality of the diversity of provisions in primary and secondary education government, government-assisted, NGO and private sector schools, and the madrasa is recognized. It is agreed that this diversity will continue, subject to following a common core curriculum and adopting minimum common standards regarding learning provisions. The English medium private schools following external curricula should add “Bangladesh studies” in their curricula. Multiple delivery modes in basic education with common core curriculum and standards. The common core curriculum for all types of secondary level institutions (including madrasa) will include Bangla, English, mathematics, science, Bangladesh studies, and IT which will be complemented by additional subjects pertinent for each major stream general, vocational, and madrasa. In addition to the vocational stream in schools, there will be various forms of skill training activities according to graded national skill standards designed to meet skill needs in domestic and overseas employment markets. Instruction in science and IT should be given special attention. Literacy and non-formal education. A literacy program to eliminate adult illiteracy by 2014 is proposed. Non-formal education is seen as a means of providing a second chance to those who drop out of formal schools and appears to be separated from the “literacy campaign.”
Student assessment to discourage rote learning. Assessment of learners' achievement should be based on public examinations and continuous evaluation by teachers, which should aim at assessing cognitive, affective and reasoning domains. Major public examinations will be at the end of 8th and 12th grades. Other examinations will be organized at the district/upazila levels at the end of 5th , 8th and 10th grades to award scholarships and (possibly) evaluate system performance. All exams should be aimed at discouraging rote learning. Teachers' status, incentives and training. Teachers' recruitment, training, professional support and remuneration should be important elements of the strategy for improving quality in education. A Teacher Recruitment and Development Commission should be established to recruit teachers and support their professional development. Governance and management measures. A consolidated education law should be enacted covering major separate laws, regulations and circulars. A statutory and permanent education commission should be formed to guide implementation of policy objectives and consider adjustments in education policy over time. Primary, secondary and non-formal education should come under one Ministry; and a separate Ministry of Higher Education should look after tertiary education. Management of primary education should be decentralized with greater involvement of community and parents and greater authority for schools. Secondary education should be decentralised to upazila, district and division levels. The UGC should have greater authority and be renamed as Higher Education Council. Accreditation Councils should be formed to encourage improvement and self-regulation in quality of tertiary institutions. Incentives should be given for faculty research. The National University's affiliating function should be decentralized to divisional levels by establishing branches. Enhanced education resources It can be seen that the policy recommendations are essentially in the form of normative goals or preferences in general terms, on which it is easier to have a broad agreement, but more difficult to agree on details. Indeed, as the saying goes, the devil is in the details. Fulfilling public expectations It has treated gender as a separate issue for girls and women, presented in a separate chapter, rather than as a system-wide problem of educational content, objectives, pedagogy, values and attitudes. Decentralization of education governance and management has been left as platitudes with some inconsistent signals about what should happen at local and institution levels. Most university graduates today with a Master's degree, as well as doctors, engineers and lawyers, are likely to be without a clue about Plato, the French Revolution, Ibn Khaldun, Moen-jo-daro, or Gautam Buddha- elements of the common heritage and achievements of human civilization. The education policy does not seem to take cognizance of the problem or offer any hints for remedy. Indeed the details regarding implementation of major policy objectives or definitive resolutions of some of the critical issues which arise in part from an ideological divide, which is a reality of our polity, cannot be offered in a national education policy statement. The public expectation, and for that matter, the expectation of public opinion leaders and even professionals in the education field, is to look upon the education system to provide solutions to major problems of our society and nation. No matter these problems are rooted in history, culture, political norms and ecological and geo-political circumstances, which also shape and constrain the development of the education system. The education system is certainly not immune from the ills of society it is expected to remedy. Similar expectations are held regarding a national education policy statement. It is expected that a policy statement will provide the direction, instruction and guideline; even set the objectives and targets; and offer operational plans to overcome major deficiencies of the education system, which have arisen and accumulated over decades, if not centuries. The attempt to do too much and solve many intractable problems by proclaiming a policy may have been a major reason for none of the over half a dozen past education policies being implemented. The stakes have to be lowered. It needs to be accepted that a policy statement cannot provide solutions to all major problems of the education system all at once. It cannot even articulate a unanimous view of the nature of the problem and the main goal on some of the issues, let alone offering a solution. It is understandable if the government policy makers find themselves in a hesitant mood and are circumspect about what the next steps regarding the draft policy should be and how they should proceed on these. In order to forego the fate of past policy statements and ensure that the policy remains alive and operational, four pragmatic principles, outlined below, need to be considered. 1. Make it known and emphasize that education policy development is an on-going process which will continue to be modified. Issues on which there are well-justified differences of views need not be resolved all at once. Experience and implementation of steps on which there is common ground often can show the way towards optimal solutions for more complex problems and mitigate the high-stake psychology of “now or never.” 2. To establish credibility and bona fides of the government regarding the first item above, support should be announced, perhaps after a cabinet deliberation of the draft policy, for the institutional mechanisms of on-going education policy review and development anticipated and proposed in the draft education policy. These mechanisms include a) establishment of a permanent, statutory and high power permanent education commission, b) establishment of a Higher Education Council with enhanced authority and responsibility compared to present UGC, c) one ministry of education for basic an pre-university education that will facilitate implementation of many reforms proposed regarding school education, and d) adopting a basic framework law regarding organization, management and state obligations regarding basic and school education. 3. The process of consideration and adoption of the education policy should be kept as open and transparent as possible. Comments that have been received and how and if the draft policy has been modified for submission to the cabinet, should be made public and available on the website. The government recommendations including deferral of some issues for further consideration should be presented to the parliament and joint public hearing should be organized by the two parliamentary standing committees. This will take some time, but the deliberate pace would be worthwhile to increase public understanding and the chances of effective implementation of the policy. 4. The decision of the government to abandon the ad hoc approach of PRSP and to go back to the five-year development planning mode provides an institutional mechanism for resource provisions, coordination, monitoring and placing all reform and development efforts in education within the agreed policy framework- always a challenge in a complex and multi-faceted endeavor which the national education system is The formulation of the sixth plan should be regarded, and so announced, as the vehicle for making a major stride towards the early implementation steps for new education policy. The plan to be designed within the perspective of Vision 2021, creates the opportunity to look at the medium term and longer tem goals of the education policy. Sixth Plan-Opportunity for Realistic Action Universalization up to grade 8 There is a misunderstanding that extending primary or elementary stage up to grade 8 means that all the students at this level have to be served only in primary school and every primary school must have classrooms and teachers for eight grades plus preschool. It should be remembered that at least one-third of the eligible children are already enrolled in secondary level schools. The majority of primary schools can remain and perhaps should remain only up to class 5 in the foreseeable future and serve as feeder to eight-year primary school or 5 to 7 year secondary school. The extended primary education stage can be offered in different types of institutions as long as the required curriculum is followed and necessary standards are maintained through appropriate coordination. The main concern should be that the present poor quality of primary education is not extended up to grade 8 under the new arrangement. Equity with quality in primary and secondary education Area- based coordinated planning and financing criteria and process will be critical in overcoming inequities that are related to geography, socio-economic category, and type of institutions. Teachers as key to quality The fact is that teachers for primary and secondary education are drawn mainly from colleges under the National University. Quality of instruction in these colleges and the products from them becoming the source of teaching personnel, who then prepare students unfit for tertiary education or the world of work, have created a vicious cycle. An approach, followed in some countries, is to offer education as a subject in the four-year general college degree program as pre-service preparation and attract bright students with a promise of stipend, subject to condition that they would serve at least five years in primary or secondary school. They can be promised a higher level of remuneration in recognition of their superior capability. One condition for success of this initiative would be to ensure that the selected colleges for this project are supported to maintain acceptable quality in facilities and instruction. A hundred colleges under such a project producing at least 10,000 teacher candidates each year (after the initial four years) over a decade would create a nucleus of high quality and enthusiastic teachers in primary and secondary schools in the country. Eventually, the existing primary and secondary teacher training institutions can concentrate on much needed continuous in-service training of teachers. The success of other quality initiatives such as transforming pedagogy, making continuous and summative learning assessment and examinations more meaningful, and turning teachers into role models for young people will depend on attracting talented and motivated people into teaching. Common core contents in primary and secondary education Two aspects of decentralization The contribution of the sixth plan can be to support R&D in this respect by designing and trying out the formation of education authorities with substantial autonomy and control of resources at the district level for secondary education and upazila level for primary education (up to grade 8) including literacy and non-formal education respectively-possibly in six districts in six divisions, and a selected number of upazilas. Similarly, selected institutions at tertiary and lower levels can be given special dispensation to exercise autonomy in their own affairs, based on a contract with them for educational outcomes. The assessment of and lessons from these experiences can be the basis for eventual nationwide reform in education governance and management. Literacy and non-formal education (NFE}in a life-long learning perspective Consolidating quality in tertiary education National University colleges, some 2,000 in total, serve 80 percent of the tertiary education students and supply almost all teachers to primary and secondary institutions. The sixth plan's focus should be to apply rigorously to them the existing quality standards and consolidate and rationalize existing institutions where they cannot be justified in terms of effective demand. The same principle should apply to madrasas at the tertiary level. Financing strategy to support quality with equity Inadequately addressed in the policy draft are criteria and strategy for education financing to support the key policy objective of ensuring educational development based on quality with equity. The strategic considerations for this purpose would include: possibilities of area-based capitation grants for population and number of eligible children as practiced in many countries; criteria and determination of per student amount for supporting different types of institutions at the primary and secondary levels; the desired ratios, say, between madrasas and general schools, and vocational and general schools; the relative priorities in public financing among stages of education; and how public funds can complement or compensate for private expenditure to promote equity criteria. The resource planning allocation in the sixth plan need to take a stab at these thorny issues, even if adequate answers may not be provided readily. Unfortunately, there are no magic bullets for improving educational systems. There is no alternative to patient and system-based work simultaneously on several fronts. The critical concern is that these efforts should result in cumulative progress rather than periodic regression.
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Quality improvement in tertiary education. Tertiary education institutions, both public and private, should be encouraged to take responsibility to establish and maintain quality standards within agreed framework and to ensure effective use of resources. A four-year degree program should be acceptable higher education qualification for most occupations except for those aiming for teaching, research and other jobs that call for specialized expertise. A three credit English course should be compulsory for all degree students. Various quality enhancing investments in facilities and teacher upgrading are proposed. Pedagogic technology such as internet and education television channels should be supported.