Dhaka, Bangladesh (BBN)-Bangladesh cannot be a middle income country if the challenges its education system facing is not overcome by 2021, says a World Bank report.
The main challenge that Bangladesh’s education system have been facing is dropout.
The key reason of the challenge is poverty.
Stay out from school, shortage of educational institutions than demand, low quality education system, inefficient teachers, faulty exam procedures, shortage of quality education and inadequate budget allocation for education sector are the other reasons of the dropout, the reports added.
A total of 26,41,067 general and 3,28,326 madrasa students registered to sit for the exams in that year while the number of female examinees is higher than males.
In 2012, the number of examinees rose by around 3.17 lack.
According to the statistics of Directorate of Primary Education (DPE), around 37.89 lack students of different types of schools registered for enrolling class-I back in 2008 and of them 26.41 lack registered for this year's exams.
The statistics shows around 30 percent students were dropped out from their academic life in different grades from I-V during the period of 2008-2012.
According to Bangladesh Bureau of Educational Information and Statistics (BANBEIS), 39.8 percent students were dropped from education in 2010 while the rate was 45.1 percent and 49.3 percent in 2009 and 2008 respectively although non-government organisations estimate the number much higher with 60.2 percent in government primary schools (GPS) and 60 percent in Registered Non-Government Primary Schools (RNGPS) in 2011, reports eduin.com.
Although this statistics shows a decreasing trend of dropout rate over the years, the rate is still upsetting as multilevel initiatives were taken to connect students to their class rooms including Reaching Out of School Children (ROSC) and Primary Education Development Program (PEDP) with huge investment in education.
Many reports have shown that dropout rate is much higher in rural areas, particularly in the chars, coastal belts, Haors and Hilly areas, where most of the people live below the poverty line (approximately 80 percent).
Thus economic condition of the people, their earning, ownership of asset, way of living and opportunities contribute to the failure of retention of children enrolled in primary schools.
A significant number of students are being used as means for earning especially as seasonal labour during the harvesting season.
Thus they engage with earning activities and their long absence in the schools and subsequent poor academic performance are believed to lead to drop.
Shortage of skilled teachers and teacher's attendance is a big concern, particularly in the remote areas.
As most of the schools are double shifted, a minimum of three teachers will be required at a time.
According to BANBEIS, 2012 the teacher-pupil ratio is 1:50 although education policy recommended it should be 1:30.
The high teacher-student ratio of many schools contribute to poor quality of education leading to drop.
In many areas, it is a common complaint that teachers come late and leave early, particularly in the remote ones.
As pre-schools started, more than 90 percent schools run in double shifts while the contact hour of single shift school is about 1.5 times higher than double shift schools.
The children from single shift schools get more time to cover the syllabus whereas students of double shift schools do not get the opportunity of more contact hours that ultimately trigger the drop out of learners.
In addition, lack of child-centered and child-friendly teaching learning process and equipment do not attract children to schools and increase drop out.
Lack of entertainment facility might contribute to drop out as viewed by many teachers and local government representatives.
About 8 percent parents of drop out children also identified lack of entertainment facility for students as a cause of drop out.
According to them there is no arrangement of any kind of entertainment which attract the students towards schools.
Some teachers also viewed that lack of entertainment facility makes education unfriendly.
They also think that there is also a lack of learner friendly and need based curriculum.
Sometimes defective evaluation system of competence level also may discourage students to attend schools, many think.
Cost of education paying for the private tutor is also a factor of drop out.
Research shows, the number of expenditure items has been increased to 17 from 11 where cost has gone for double during 2005-2011.
On the other hand, poor school infrastructure, role of SMC, the responsibility of local government and poor financing in education (only 11 percent in 2012-13 budget, which is much far from the international commitment of 2005), corruption, lack of governance, lack of proper supervision and monitoring, absence of mid-day meal programs, lack of capacity of parents-teachers association (PTA) and eve teasing are triggering the dropout rate.
In this backdrop, some remedial measures should be taken in a comprehensive way. Stipend programs should cover all (100 percent) the students while various sanitation programs, particularly rural focused campaign can increase awareness of parents.
In the rural areas, comprehensive focus should be given to school infrastructure and communication development, particularly school going roads should be maintained on regular basis.
BBN/ANS/AD-09June14-8:20pm (BST)