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Education quality suffers on shoe-string budget

MUSTAK HOSSAIN
Bangladesh's educational spending, the huge chunk of which is gobbled up by teacher's salaries and infrastructure, is not enough to raise the standard of education, experts and watchers said.
Although the sector was given the highest allocation of Tk 6,871 crore or 16 per cent of the total budget in the current fiscal, only a trickle goes to developing learning materials and textbooks, they said.
Monitoring and supervision, also vital for raising quality, remains equally neglected.
"The budgetary allocation for education is poor in terms of Gross National Product (GNP) and most of it is spent for other than quality improvement," said Manzoor Ahmed, convenor of Education Watch, an independent research and monitoring organisation.
He said only two per cent of the GNP was dedicated to the sector. It should be taken to five per cent in the next five years and new resources should be allocated for quality management.
UN bodies recommend for spending more than 6 per cent of GNP for education.
Experts said Bangladesh's spending per student in primary level is about $15, one of the lowest in the world and lower than other South
Asian countries. However, a comparative figure is not available.
A recent Education Watch survey says teachers' salary eats into 94.6 per cent of government school allocation, 87.6 per cent of private school budget and 93.9 per cent of madrasa spending. While it is 51.1 per cent of non-formal school fund.
Seventy-two per cent of total budget of the country's autonomous universities are spent for salaries and allowances of teachers and employees while only 13 percent for education and research, a report of the University Grants Commission (UGC) said.
Of the public university budget, Tk 265.62 crore out of Tk 302.80 crore was spent for paying salaries and other
allowances of teachers and employees.
The report said only Tk 36.03 core was spent for education and research purpose during the period.
The country's education sector holds little promise as nearly 70 per cent of government and nongovernment educational institutions are either below or semi-standard, says a education ministry survey.
The survey that covered 23,000 non-government schools and colleges, categorised 8,330 institutions, or 36.32 per cent as below standard, 7,067 or 30.82 per cent as semi-standard, 6,939 or 30.26 per cent as standard and 597 or only 2.60 per cent as high standard.
The grading of an institution was
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based on its performance in public examinations, teachers-students ratio, physical infrastructure and library and laboratory facilities.
The percentage of pass of last year's Higher Secondary Certificate (HSC) hit a six-year low of 27.09 per cent, indicating a free fall of standards, some experts said.
The percentage was 28.41 in 2001, 37.05 in 2000, 53.39 in 1999, 44.89 in 1998 and 48.48 in 1997.
The government is spending Tk 663 crore or about 10 per cent of the education budget as stipend for primary school students to increase enrolment.
But experts believe much of the amount will be spent on purposes other than learning.
Under this programme, a poor family having one school-going child will get Tk100 per month and a family having more than one school-going children will get Tk125.