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Primary education still plagued by problems
DESPITE different government and nongovernment initiatives to enroll all the primary age children into school, approximately three million of them currently remain out of school due to a number of barriers and challenges.
The barriers mainly include — regional disparities, poor quality education, limited opportunities, government's low budget on education (Bangladesh allocated 2.6 percent of GDP while other South Asian countries up to 6 percent), family's economic need, policy gaps, lack of flexible time for schooling and lack of programmes addressing the real needs of children.
Due to poor communication system and geographical remoteness, retention rate of children in primary schools is lower in haor and char areas by 8 percent, in hilly areas by 3 percent and indigenous-dominated areas by 2 percent than the national average of 81 percent, according to UNICEF statistics.
Regional disparity and communication disadvantages cause a wide variety in children's attendance in schools among different regions. Net Attendance Rate (NAR) varies by 12.8 percent between the six divisions, 16 percent between slums and regional average and 21 percent
among the 64 districts, according to Rasheda K Choudhury, Executive Director, CAMPE.
Poor quality of education (often considered not appropriate by experts) acts as a major hindrance to children's enrolment and retention in schools. Curriculum has been designed in such a way that children have to learn only through memorising method.
Children very often lose interest in learning due to the boring method of memorising. They want to learn though a fun learning method. They want to learn through photographs, games and sports and other sorts of amusements.
Moreover, the teachers in many cases give lessons in such a way that it seems boring to children. They lose interest in attending classroom. Children will be interested to attend classroom whenever they find amusement.
Teachers should be trained up properly so that their method of teaching and delivering lecture are more lively and amusing. Different sorts of amusing topics should be included in the textbooks so that the children get interest in reading the topics, experts believe.
There should be a linking mechanism between formal and non-formal education to enhance opportunities for children to get enrolled in schools.
The government's budgetary
allocation for education is also very poor. Due to lack of financial support, the quality of education cannot be improved as per expectation and logistic support for children cannot be provided properly.
While the government spends around 2.2 percent of total GDP (gross domestic product) for the education sector, experts suggest for allocating at least 6 percent to get expected results.
In many schools, there is scarcity of classrooms, seating arrangements, teachers and other logistic support. These crises cannot be addressed without increasing budgetary alloca-
However, to address the constraints, a project tided 'The Primary Education Development Programme-PEDP III' has been launched on July last year to be continued till June 2016. Ministry of Primary and Mass Education coordinating, while ten donors including Unicef are providing
PEDP 111 encompasses all interventions and funding that
support pre-primary and primary education up to class five. The project has four components — Quality learning and teachers, participation and disparity reduction, decentralisation and effectiveness and sec-tor/programme planning and management.
When many of the countrymen live below the poverty line, the government is trying hard to establish Bangladesh as a mid-
dle-income country by first half of the next decade.
But the people, who live below the poverty line, think that it would be more mature and a wise decision if they could engage their male child in profitmaking activities instead of sending him to schools.
So, as soon as the male child starts growing, parents engage him in farming lands, fishing or other sorts of informal jobs so
that he can support his family financially.
In case of female children, the situation seems to be worse because they are married off at an early age. Parents think that educating girl child is a wastage of money.
That is why, community participation is very much important to ensure enrolment, attendance and retention of children in schools.Policy gaps of the government acts as another hindrance for enrolment of children in schools.
The government formulates the same policy for all the children of the country. But the children of remote area, ultrapoor families and other underprivileged sections need to get more focus compared to the children of privileged sections and urban area.
The government should formulate policy targeting the geographically disadvantaged people, providing more stipend to the ultra-poor family children, addressing the language gap of indigenous children and other sorts of disparities.
Another major problem is inflexible time of schools. In rural areas, most of the male children have to help their fathers in land farming or other jobs, while the girl children have to help mothers in household chores.
The school timing and schedule of these household activities appear to be conflicting because both have to be done at the same time. If the children get flexible time, then their enrolment, attendance and retention in schools will surely be increased.
So, it seems that only education interventions are not enough to address the issue of OoSG (out of school children), rather it needs to be addressed with many other co-related factors.