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Corruption eats away education quality

Staff Correspondent, Khulna
04 May, 2003

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Corruption and campus violence are two main impediments to raising the standard of education and a proactive civil society role is a must to achieve consensus on different education-related issues. For maintaining a congenial academic atmosphere, there must be a 10-year moratorium on politics by teachers, students and employees at educational institutions, higher salary for teachers, increased teacher-student contact hours and more teachers.

The University Act of 1973 has to be amended and availability of standard learning materials ensured. This was the unanimous view of participants at a dialogue on "Education Policy", in the city yesterday. Organised by the Centre for Policy Dialogue (CPD), The Daily Star and the Prothom Alo, the dialogue was part of the Regional Consultation Meeting on National Policy Review Forum-2003.

Vice-chancellor of Khulna University Prof. Abdul Kader Bhuiyan was the chief guest while Principal of Government B L College, Khulna, Moazzem Hossain chaired the dialogue held at the Millennium Inn.Prof. Bhuiyan said in the past education was never separated from politics, but then there was a positive political motivation. But now, an unhealthy political influence is vitiating the academic atmosphere.

Dhaka University came into being after Calcutta University on the basis of a political motivation, which was a positive one. But that could not be materialised, he noted. "We need to have a consensus first whether we want to have a corruption- and violence-free campus for a modern and scientific education system," Bhuiyan said.

CPD Executive Director Dr. Debapriya Bhattacharya, who coordinated the dialogue, called upon the civil society to work as a pressure group to bargain with the government on different education issues. "Education sector could get rid of the vicious circle of politics if the civil society remained vigilant against it," he observed.

Supporting the demand for higher salary for teachers, he said, "Without giving due recognition and social security to teachers, we can't expect better education. Trained teachers are the driving force of human resource. "Dr. Kaniz Siddique of North South University, Dhaka, mentioned that there was a World Bank-aided programme under secondary education reforms to harmonise teachers' salaries in the public and private schools.

Moazzem Hossain said the standard of education is being affected as students passed the primary level with 'only 17 competencies out a total of 50'. This also creates problem in secondary and higher education, he added. Secondary education lacks proper academic supervision, he said. "The existing monitoring is administrative rather than academic. "He pointed out that the country does not have a 'fully-fledged education policy' even 32 years after independence.

Prof. Khandaker Khalilur Rahman said to draw highly talented persons into teaching profession, teachers should be given higher salaries and other benefits. "We got a total of eight education policies, but none of those were properly implemented." Prof. Mohammad Masum of economics department at the Jahangirnagar University presented a progress report on the CPD task force on education sector. Although there has been a remarkable achievement in enrolment for primary education, the standard remained very poor, he noted.

He mentioned that only one per cent students were able to 'achieve the 50 competencies' in five years of primary education. There is session jam even at primary educational institutions and five-year courses take more than six years to complete, he said. Prof. Masum criticised the government's 'cash for education programme' for primary level, involving Tk 623 crore in five years. This would not bring a positive impact on education as students of secondary level are usually lured by labour market.

There are 6.3 million child labourers in the country. "So the government should think about 'cash for education programme' for secondary level students," he observed. Advocate Firoz Ahmed said there should be a unified curriculum for both public and private universities for at least five years. Some speakers proposed a teacher exchange programme between reputed schools and the others not so.

The other speakers included Shahidul Islam of the Teachers-Employees United Council, Sheikh Didarul Alam, Dr. Gazi Mizanur Rahman, Dr. MMA Hasem, Jannatul Ferdous Rekha, Kazi Wahiduzzaman, Ahad Ali, Dr. GC Ghosh, Dr. Shibendra Shekhar Shikder and Rizia Parveen.