Pvt primary schools: 14,111 shut down during pandemic

Covid-19 has taken a heavy toll on privately run primary schools, resulting in permanent closure of 14,111 of the institutions just in one year as they failed to bear the operational costs, says a government report.  

The pandemic also saw a drastic fall in the number of teachers and students in the non-government primary schools, including kindergartens.

The Annual Primary School Census (APSC) 2021 shows the number of teachers declined by 83,268 and students by 14,61,634 in a year since 2020.

The report, prepared by the Directorate of Primary Education, has no data on English-medium schools and Qawmi madrasas. It says the institutions shut down during the pandemic were mostly kindergartens or run by NGOs.

"There needs to be some kind of incentive for the schools that had to stop their activities. But that should be done after bringing all the institutions under a regulatory framework with a specific guideline," Rasheda K Choudhury, executive director of Campaign for Popular Education (CAMPE), told The Daily Star.

Iqbal Bahar Chowdhury, chairman of Bangladesh Kindergarten School and College Oikya Parishad, said the situation for kindergartens was grave.  "Our estimate shows at least 20,000 kindergartens were closed down during the pandemic and many teachers lost jobs."

He added, "The remaining 40,000 kindergartens are not in good shape either."

During the pandemic, they have sought financial assistance for teachers, soft loans for owners of kindergartens and waiver of utility bills of the hard-hit schools. "If we get that assistance now, it would help us survive," he added.

In 2020, there were 1,33,002 primary-level educational institutions, including public, private, NGO-run and kindergartens. The figure stood at 1,18,891 last year, according to APSC 2020 and APSC 2021.

According to the reports, there were 14,211 NGO-run learning centres and schools in 2020 and the number decreased to 3,958 in 2021. There were 29,897 kindergartens in 2020 and 28,193 in 2021.

"Due to the permanent closures, students from these private institutions went to government primary schools," Alamgir Mohammed Monsurul Alam, director general of DPE, told The Daily Star.

The reports say 60.52 percent of all primary school students were enrolled in government institutions in 2020 and that increased to 70.23 percent.

According to the APSC, the number of teachers in all primary schools was 7,40,471 in 2020 and it decreased to 6,57,203 in 2021.

The reason behind this is, a DPE director said, most of the teachers who lost jobs did not get that back or return to the profession.

Rasheda K Choudhury, however, said, "We need a detailed and critical analysis to know the reason behind the fall in the number of so many teachers in one year."

Although the number of students at government primary school increased, the rate of enrolment in all kinds of primary-level institutions dropped in 2021.

Many DPE officials blamed it on Covid-19 situation in which many guardians did not send their kids to pre-primary schools.

The reports also say there were 2,15,51,691 students in all primary schools in 2020 and the number came down to 2,00,90,057 last year.

One of the DPE directors mentioned that about 39 lakh pre-primary students got enrolled in 2020 and it was 31 lakh last year.

Not necessarily all of these students dropped out as many might have gone to English-medium schools or Qawmi madrasas, and the DPE doesn't have any data about them, said directorate officials.

Monsurul Alam, director general of DPE, added, "There was a propaganda from a vested quarter that primary schools will never reopen, and many parents sent their children to Qawmi madrasas. But all of them are now returning to primary schools."

Contacted, Primary and Mass Education State Minister Zakir Hossen said the government does not have any plan to give incentives to schools that shut doors to students.

"We don't have any plan to restart all these private schools and kindergartens. We are working for the betterment of government primary schools. Most of the students of these [private] schools are moving to government primary schools," he told The Daily Star.

"If needed, we will set up institutions in the areas that do not have government primary schools," he added.