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The promise must be kept

FAZLE HASAN ABED
THE fifth annual Education Watch report focuses on quality with equity in primary education. It probes into interconnected factors bearing on performance of schools and children in specific locations in 10 upazilas. A micro (children, teachers, parents and the school) and a meso (role of the upazila education authority and local administration) perspective, complementing a macro and national view, the focus of the previous Education Watch studies, is provided in the present report.
The big picture of primary education deprivation is well-known. Despite commendable progress in the last fifteen years in expanding enrolment, the large majority of children, as many as two out of three, mostly poor and disadvantaged in other ways, grow up without basic skills and preparation for life.
It is not one or another cause, but a syndrome of poverty and disadvantage that causes deprivation in primary education. Contributing importantly to non-enrolment and dropout are child labour, the phenomenon of private tutoring, school and home factors related to low class attendance, and problems of the first generation learners. Almost half of primary school children have mothers who are illiterate and both parents are without literacy for one-third of the children.
Low average school attendance, about 60 percent, is caused by children's need to help at home either regularly or for seasonal farm work, ill health or sickness of child or a parent, acute family economic problems, and falling behind in lessons with no help to catch up from teacher or at home. Without the capacity of school and willingness or ability of teachers to help the child to catch up, any disruption in schooling set in motion a slippery slope of further lag, more absences, and eventual dropping out.
The well-intentioned interventions such as distribution of free textbooks and stipends for children from poor families, consuming a large part of the government spending on primary education, are beset by governance problems and clearly do not address the quality problems. Arguably, as the experience of NGOs show, ensuring a properly functioning school is the most important inducement that can be offered even to poor parents who are willing to make sacrifices for their children's education.
Classroom observations carried out by the research team revealed that serious deficiencies in subject knowledge in key subjects as Mathematics, Bangla and English caused students to be subjected to wrong information, explanation, examples and pronunciation. Teaching was based, with rare exceptions, on oneway communication in often large and crowded classrooms with a class timetable that did not permit carrying out a complete lesson sequence. Few learning aids were used, but a stick as a tool for discipline was seen in many classes.
Teacher recruitment riddled with corruption 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 teachers in both government and registered non-government schools leading to recruitment of people who
were not qualified to be teachers.
No one appears to have a 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 madrasas, for example, remained virtually without any supervision although they served a sizable proportion of children. The proprietary kindergartens are growing in number and are popular with the upcoming middle class even in small towns and some villages, but they remain outside any regulatory framework. In fact, there is no focal point of responsibility to protect and uphold public interest in the sphere of education in the upazila.
Ambitious goals have been set for PEDP II, the umbrella development programme of the government in primary education for the period 2003/4 to 2008/9, on which much hope is pinned. But it has been already late by more than a year in getting off the ground. There has to be a much greater sense of urgency, greater determination to cut through inertia and bureaucratic obstacles on both national and external donor fronts, and a stronger will to resist extraneous vested interests than has been seen so far. The slow and halting pace of progress witnessed in the five years since the 2015 EFA goals were adopted must shift to a different cadence.
It is our sincere hope that the findings about the problems and needs in the classroom and the school will lead to greater efforts in shaping reforms and implementing them. It would be necessary to look again, in the light of the findings, at what have been planned and how these can be implemented effectively and professionally. All organizations and institutions in the country, willing and able to contribute to this effort, should be involved. We also hope that the seven-point agenda for primary education with quality and equity recommended by the Education Watch Team will receive the backing of the policymakers so that these can serve as a guideline.
Fazle Hasan Abed is Chair, Campaign for Popular Education