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Provisions and quality

Key findings

EDUCATION WATCH RESEARCH TEAM
Education Watch 2003/4 report is based on a survey of 8,212 households and 47 institutions, 73 focus group discussion, 22 case studies of children and discussion with key informants about primary education in 10 Upazilas. The highlights are presented below.
A. Education provisions
= There is a serious insufficiency of provisions, creating a deficit of the order of 50 to 60 percent in terms of schools, classrooms and teachers, if criteria for acceptable quality of provisions, such as a class room with no more than 40 children with a qualified teacher, are applied.
= Schools, especially GPS and RNGPS, which served over 80 percent of the children, were not distributed according to set criteria and were not related to child population or area of the upazila. Nor was the ratio between GPS and RNGPS based on criteria or a discernible pattern.
= There was no planned effort to develop complementarity between GPS and RNGPS, on the one hand, and the other types of institutions, such as madrassas and non-formal schools, to ensure adequate provisions for all children.
= The GPSs had on an average one more teacher than the RNGPSs, ( average of 4.5 and 3.8 teachers respectively), but both had teaching personnel to run schools only in two shifts; the gender imbalance in teaching positions remained high ( 37 percent female teachers) in spite of the policy of affirmative action in recruitment.
Concourse
B. Education resources in schools
= Fifteen percent of the schools in the 10 upazilas were rated by the research team as "good" with safe, sturdy and clean roof, walls and floors. About half were "fair" and 35 percent were rated as "poor," - judged by very basic criteria applied. Hazardous and definitely unsafe conditions were observed in some GPS and madrasas.
= Toilet facilities did not exist in 15 percent of GPS and RNGPS, based on the research team data from sample schools. One-third of the schools had separate functioning toilets for males and females and half had the same facility for both sexes. Clean water availability was "fair" to "adequate" in 80 percent of the schools.
= Construction and repair jobs done with the periodic government grants were handled by LGED without much say of school and upazila education office and was regarded almost unanimously as highly unsatisfactory, characterized by "shoddy work, waste and corruption."
= Two-thirds of the schools, as rated by the research team, had sufficient light and visibility in classrooms but one third did not meet this very basic condition. Two-thirds had an electric connection, but not necessarily electricity in all classrooms.
= Learning aids, other than blackboards and textbooks, were generally scarce, except in non-formal schools, and were not used in class, even when some were available from development projects. There were a few exception to the rule where these were used and even teachers developed their own.
= Insufficiency of teachers was a common problem. Eighty percent of the schools had four or less teachers, 21 percent three or less. On an average, 30 percent schools had more than 60 students per teacher ; over two-thirds had more than 40 students per teacher.
C. Quality in the classroom
= An inflexible and uniform centrally imposed daily school time-table fragmented the school day in very short blocks of time for up to eight separate school subjects every day, with little time for anything other than a mechanical routine in the class, even for children of grades one and two. In two shift schools, over 90 percent of all schools, this meant no more than 20 to 25 minutes of learning time in a class period, which was not sufficient to complete a lesson sequence.
= The process of teacher recruitment was seen by stakeholders at the local level as a major impediment to improvement of quality in primary education. SMC members, parents, teachers, AUEOs and UEOs all expressed concern about infractions and manipulation of rules and regulations regarding the recruitment of both GPS and RNGPS teachers leading to recruitment of teachers who were not qualified to be teachers.
= Most GPS teachers are trained but most RNGPS teachers are not. With an annual capacity of 6,000 in PTIs and at least 100,000 primary school teachers in need of training, the demand cannot be met by current training approaches. Moreover major overhaul is needed in PTI training to make it more effective, since studies have shown no significant impact of this training in student performance.
= Two main initiatives for in-service training -sub-cluster training and URC subject-based training - are not working well in the 10 upazilas. Professional deficiency of AUEOs who are the trainers for this event, and inadequate follow-up of outcomes of training at the school level rendered the sub-cluster training into a monthly social gathering of teachers. URCs nominally exist in the ten upazilas but four are not functional yet and three had stopped due to lack of fund (since the development project funding ran out).
D. Management of schools
= AUEOs are the frontline supervisors for primary schools with the charge of giving teachers professional support and advice to do their job properly. Most informants in focus groups and interviews thought this promise is not fulfilled. Large number of schools, counting only GPS, RNGPS and community schools , in the charge of an AUEO ( average of 41 and a range of 16 to 212 in the ten upazilas), no budget for mobility, lack of training for offering professional supervisory support to teachers, and filling out long inspection forms about compliance with rules rather than advising on effective teaching were identified as the problems. In addition, complaints were rampant that extorting pay-ments and favours from teachers on threat of punishment was a common practice.
= Union Parishad - the only local government tier existing at present, has almost no role in primary education. Chairmen and members mostly said they did not know of any significant role in primary education that has been assigned to them, although many were willing to be involved.
= SMCs have been given a broad and sweeping role in primary school management, but with little real authority. Political control now institutionalized by giving the local MP a role, and cronyism of head teachers in the case of GPS and of the founding group in the case of RNGPS, have led to formation of SMCs with mostly the wrong people for such a committee.
= No one has the responsibility and authority to maintain an oversight of primary education in the upazila. There was no common or comprehensive source of information about education in the upazila, nor was there any focal point for promoting or planning for compulsory primary education or EFA goals in the upazila. The madrassas, for example, remained virtually without any supervision although they enrolled 9 percent of the students in the upazila. In fact, there is no focal point of
responsibility to protect and uphold public interest in the sphere of education in the upazila.
= Most stakeholders at the school and upazila level were in favour of much greater and meaningful decentralization of education management. They were, at the same time, apprehensive that local pressures of vested interests would increase; and that resources were scarce at the local level, which had to come from the central authorities. On balance, however, they favoured a genuine shift towards devolution of authority and decisions to district, upazila and school levels. This would require, according to them, defining power, authority and control over resources at different levels and trying out ways of making this work. It was not clear to all stakeholders what form decentralization should take and how it was to be achieved; hence the importance of trying out approaches in selected locations.
The research team led by Samir R Nath included Altaf Hossain, Md Mahbubul Kabir, Md Abul Kalam, Mirja M Shahjamal, Rosie Nilufar Yasmin and Tata Zafar.