Climate, Covid and SDG: Quality Education

In 1974, Dr. Qudrat-I-Khuda Education Commission identified education as a weapon for social transformation. UNESCO has been promoting Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) since 1992. It led the UN decade for ESD from 2005 to 2014. The momentum of ESD was never been stronger. But with the implementation of SDGs, activity steps for education have become much stronger. SDG-4 is to provide inclusive and equitable quality education and providing lifelong learning opportunity for all. Standalone SDG 4 accompanied by numerous education related targets and indicators contained in other SDGs are means for attaining all other 16 SDG along with its goals and targets itself. 

As primary education is the pillar for all parts of education that is secondary, vocational and tertiary, likewise it is important for all these SDG implementations. While looking into the quality of education six to ten years old children and adolescent are not achieving minimum level of proficiency in reading and mathematics. If we consider the attainment of primary school enrollment vis-a-vis retention and quality; we are happy with the number but quality needs to be developed further also ability in reading and mathematics and issue of drop out.  

Most important part of primary education is the qualified teacher and their lifelong training. In this area our database is still incomplete; government is working on this to identify the teachers without training and the area of development for the teachers. SDG looks into the holistic development of a child along with health, learning and psychological well-being. The assessment shows that the proportion of children under five years of age who are developmentally on track in health, learning and psychological well-being. We need to give emphasis on proportion of teacher in pre-primary and primary education. 

A few years back following the Education Commission Report, government decided to have the primary education up to class eight level and the secondary education up to class twelve level. Policy decision though was taken, but we are far behind of implementation. Looking into the huge challenges of converting schools of class five to class eight in terms of infrastructure and teachers, this is waiting for implementation. Likewise, the secondary school to reach up to 12 class would face same type of challenges. 

On the way to inclusive education, government has a plan to develop necessary infrastructure so that the physically challenged children having special needs may have the access in all the education institutions. Also, children with autism should get equal access of learning and for that the main streaming of education along with setting up the upazilla level resource center for supporting inclusive education are being done and primarily piloting in eight places of eight divisions has been started. Role of civil society, non-government organization, researchers is crucial and they should be involved in development of education with high priority. 

Bangladesh government prepared the education sector five-year plan under the title Bangladesh Education Sector Priorities 2020-2025. It mentions quoting the ILO, that in Asia Pacific region Bangladesh has the second largest tertiary level educated unemployed people, unemployment rate increases with the level of education, the context and complexity of how tertiary education  lead to skill formulation and how skill turn into productive and decent work opportunities have to be recognized. The continuing struggle is to build an inclusive system of education with quality and equality that serves the vision and aspiration of the nation. ESD identified six issues to be addressed, those are: rural versus urban and rich versus poor education services, quality of teacher, public examination-based evaluation, employable skill from education, skill gap, aspiration of higher education, market relevance curriculum and low public investment. Other cross cutting issues are workforce for 21st century, climate change, Fourth Industrial Revolution, clean water and sanitation, incentives with midday meal, free books etc. 

Bangladesh has one of the biggest number of students which is 40 million, about 200,000 education institutions and one million teacher and stuff, sector wide approach of primary education gave dividend in implementing the primary education. In our country we have 16.4 million primary school student having a literacy rate of 75.7% in 2020. Pre-primary education got boosted up which have more than 93,000 institutions about three million students and 35,000 teachers. In 2018, net enrollment in primary school was about 98% having a drop out of 18.6% and more than 81% completed the primary school education cycle. 

Most encouraging figure is girls’ enrollment is 99.4%. Government gave much more importance on primary school education having about 5,000 new classrooms, about 8,000 additional wash blocks and tubules. For ensuring ‘education for all’ more than 45,000 children with special needs admitted in schools, government also provided about 275,000 books in authentic language and about 6,000 Braille textbooks for the visually impaired students. In primary school multimedia classrooms started its journey having 4,500 multimedia classrooms but in secondary education the number of multimedia classroom is about 33,000. In Upazilla level ICT Resource Centre, ICT Learning Centre and ICT training for the primary school teachers have been arranged. 

In Bangladesh, we have about 16,000 different categories of approved Madrasa having total 24 lakh students. Moreover, about 22,000 Quawmi Madrasas have 25 lakh students at different stages. They occupy a large portion of education but deprived most in terms of infrastructure, curriculum, education materials, co-curriculum and extra-curriculum activities. Most of the Ebtedayee madrasas are mosque-based having minimum support. Government started ICT education, digital lab and connectivity for the madrasas but need to speed up. The only training institute for the madrasa teachers is in Gazipur which caters huge number of teachers; needless to tell about bare insufficiency and this is one of the major hindrances for quality madrasa education. Six Boards of Quawmi Madrasa with the approval of the government formed a platform named Befaqul Mudrasatul Arabia, Bangladesh; they try to standardize curriculum along with organizing training for the teachers in different districts but very inadequate and unstructured. Government of Bangladesh tried to encourage and emphasize the technical and madrasa education. Among so many activities of ministry of education, higher education, secondary education and all other, madrasa and technical education did not get due attention and government properly identifying this, had a separate division under the ministry of education. Government recently established Department of Madrasa Education and Technical Education Department for better management of these sectors. This created an opportunity for the government to look into the promotion of modernization of madrasa education and also bringing the technical education in the limelight. Government took so many steps for developing the madrasa and vocational education; free textbook, more scholarship, multimedia classroom is taking the madrasa education in a modern shape. For ensuring overall quality education in the country we need to mobilize more resources for madrasa and technical institutes.

In the vocational school, traditional curriculum is being transformed to competency-based curriculum. New skill courses, pre-vocational qualifications designed under TVET reform, inclusion of more female, facilities for the technical education for more female with eight technical schools and colleges and four polytechnic Institutes only for girls are a few among huge activities for the girls’ technical education. 

In Bangladesh, tertiary level education with 103 private universities has a total of nearly four million students. These universities from the University Grants Commission have the opportunity with a free broadband to be connected with the global resources in terms of library and research.

About eliminating gender disparities in education and ensure quality access to all level of education including vocational training for the vulnerable and also persons with disabilities, indigenous people and children in vulnerable situation we have the level of Gender Parity Index (GPI) in 2019, having 1.02 with a target to reach GPI 1 in 2025.

For the training of teachers in each of the 64 districts, we have primary Teachers Training Institute where round the year training for the primary school teachers are being conducted. A system is also developed for on the job training of the teachers. Along with normal training, government arranges ICT training for them; Sheikh Russel Digital Lab is providing facilities for the schools and a robust plan for providing hardware to the primary schools also equipping the teachers with proper training. 

It is common that big cities and urban areas are blessed with better educational institute and remoteness discourages good teachers to provide service in rural school. This is more accurate for the vulnerable area with flood, cyclone, draught and salinity. From March 2020 about a year, due to Covid, educational institutes are not conducting face to face class rather on digital platforms. This is good that instead of closing the institutes education continued using digital technology. Initially we faced numerous problems which could be overcome very quickly but could not be eliminated in full. This also brought to some extent digital divide. Lack of availability of smart phone or other device, wi-fi or broad band connectivity, unavailability of mobile network, lack of skill of teachers for using the devices are challenges on the way to education and quality education for the rural area and vulnerable. It is apprehended that Covid increased dropout in schools and this is more correct for the rural and hard to reach area.

A global opinion poll, ‘My World’ by UN over 1.5 million people, a million of them identified education is one of the most important tools and six things for a better world. Education is the key to fight discrimination, improving health, secure better job. Many countries in Asia Pacific region reached share of GDP 4-6% and national budget share 15-20% in education. Bangladesh in 2020-21, for education had its allocation of 2.7% of its GDP and 15.1% of national budget which is about 66,401 crores having 9% higher than the previous year. More spending in education would ensure better demographic dividend for Bangladesh.

Writer: Former Principal Secretary and SDG Coordinator