In her inaugural address to a conference on primary education. Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina on Tuesday underlined the need for uniform ed ueational standards in the country. The issue has seldom, if ever, received the attention of policy makers That the Prime Minister is alive to the problem augurs well but we are interested to know if her government has any specific plan to take the bull by the horn. The absence of a comprehensive policy on education has been responsible for wide variations in the standards of edu cation. Now there reigns a virtual chaos at the primary level of education.

It is a Himalayan task to narrow the qualitative gaps in the three streams of education on offer. Even if we do not take into account the various methods and curricula within a stream —private English medium to be precise — there is little chance of effecting comparable standards be tween the general primary education and madrasa education. Both primary and madrasa education cannot compete with the English rrtedium schooling for reasons understandable.

There is. however, no question of bringing the three streams at par by lowering the quality of the best among them. The effort should be directed towards raising the standard of the other two lagging far behind. We are really bored of hearing the same statement that education has received the highest budgetary allocation. Now we would like to see results. Is the allocation enough for delivering what is needed for a country that boasts enormous human resources. To ensure the resources' meaningful utilisation we need modern and scientific education. But we are still stuck in the three-stream dilemma. When opportunities at the primary level are so discriminatory and a little more than one-third of the population barely qualify to be literate — not to confuse with the more fortunate ones' functional literacy — it is too much to expect that the human resource can be made desirably productive.

What we need is a radical reform of our education system. We need a vision of education that Will bring out the best of our human and cultural traits. We have to create people of peace, ethics, professional ability and self-respect. For all this, foundation has to be laid at the primary stage.