Racket in school admission must be stopped

The struggle to raise a nation's standard is undergone first and foremost in the classroom. What has established this idea so unshakably in people's minds is a recent, and to many a rather alarming, phenomenon -- the new intensity of global economic rivalry. The key to economic progress is deeply rooted in a nation's advancement in scientific learning and skill in the application of technical knowledge and a free and unfettered atmosphere for the growth of creative skills
Jobs in industries, manufacturing and services call for more than button pressing automaton. They will require workers who are educated. While in many countries international comparisons are already being used as a catalyst for educational reform, we have shown appalling apathy towards achieving at least a meaningful standard.
Economists and educational experts in the Asian region are now convinced that higher investment in education coupled with the initiative to develop human resources has helped South Korea reach the top.
Seoul launched an aggressive effort to curb excessive spending on tutors and reduce a burgeoning, untaxed service industry, mostly dominated by foreigners. More important, it seeks to promote egalitarianism among students by disallowing parents a chance to buy their children a "superior" education.
Private tuition and coaching centre-based education are chipping away at the edifice of the education system and destroying merit and growth of intelligence of the students. The problems are lack of resources and declining quality. The government must provide in public education what parents are obliged to buy privately.
In compliance with the High Court directive on a writ petition by some aggrieved citizens, the ministry of education has formed a committee to prepare a list of teachers involved in coaching business. The government must ensure a better living and housing facilities for teachers through enhanced salary and other amenities commensurate with market trend of essential commodities.
The nation today is faced with a serious crisis -- educational institutions from the primary to the highest level suffer from mediocrity, a terrifying vacuum of quality, antiquated laboratories and teaching methods, migration of talented teachers and an appalling lack of interest exhibited by the students in pursuing higher education. Mere earning of a degree or a certificate without qualitative improvement in the quality of education has pushed the nation to the sidelines.
Class room teaching has suffered because some greedy teachers force the students to go for beyond-the-class tutoring. These coaching centres are allegedly engaged in an unholy alliance with other agencies that have access to admission test question papers of some universities.
While access to education is a fundamental constitutional right for every child, some schools are charging exorbitant fees much above the Tk.5,000 stipulated by the ministry of education during admission. This is simply extortion in the name of disseminating education!
The percentage of pass in the primary education terminal examination this year has seen an increase of 97.26%, but the quality of education, experts opine, has not shown a remarkable improvement. Of equal concern is the dropout rate, especially of girl children, in class 5 -- which is still one-third of the total number admitted in class 1 -- in the rural schools due to poverty of the parents.
Quantity at the cost of quality has done the greatest harm to a nation struggling to achieve competitiveness on a global basis. Shockingly, enthusiasm for a career in science is waning countrywide. People having better background in science find lucrative jobs elsewhere and are not keen to take up teaching or research as a career.
Even though the government has given high priority to primary and secondary level education, it is not functioning properly. Let us leave aside higher education because, through the World Bank and IMF's tinted glasses, higher education is a sector where large amounts of government money were spent on subsidies! But when the World Bank stressed the need to protect elementary education up to SSC level because it felt that the social rates of return in these sectors exceeded the returns in higher education, and because investment in "universal literacy" helped improve equity and remove income imbalances, things hardly improved.
Scholarships and mid-day meal introduced at the primary level to encourage the underprivileged groups to attend school will be of no use unless the structures are there and amenities for teaching are available. Schools are in a mess, struggling hard for existence. If there are no schools, no commodious classrooms, no teaching, no quality education or no access to education, the exploding population will be forced to live below the poverty line. Consequently, they will be incapable of getting proper jobs or any means of decent living.
The root cause of the abysmal poverty in the country, and decline in the quality of education and dropout from schools is linked to bad economic policies we have pursued since liberation. Bangladesh is a poor country because poverty has become a constituency which is carefully nurtured by politicians of every hue. So they spend vast amounts on grandiose schemes that amount to little more than charity. Since charity definitely begins at home, most of the money gets funneled directly into the capacious pockets of officials and village level politicians. Poverty continues to exist because no government has given the poor the tools with which they can themselves better their lives.
If this were not true, the politicians would build schools worth their name so that vast numbers of underprivileged Bangladeshi boys and girls could have access to education, and the children of the poorest of our people could have a chance to rise above the poverty line.
But if politicians did all these things, it would become that much harder to persuade the people to vote for silly reasons through exhortations of slogans.
We need teachers with devotion and commitment to teaching, and such committed teachers have to be amply rewarded by the government and the society they serve. If we can honour our heroes in games and sports, as we did recently by rewarding the women's cricket team for attaining "one day status," it is no less important that some of our committed teachers in the primary and secondary level, who are working ceaselessly in building the edifice of the nation, should also be honoured in some way or other. In a society torn asunder by conflict and corruption and eroding fast under the influence of wealth and authoritarian spirit, we need the idealism of such teachers to show us the path of enlightenment and glory.

The writer is a Columnist of The Daily Star. E-mail : [email protected]