People have been crying out for quality education for a long time. But a pandemic sense of hopelessness grips the people as quality education seems to be something like just pie in the sky. The fact is known all over the world that education is the bedrock of the economic prosperity and, for that matter, development and quality education coexist. But in Bangladesh the quality education has not been paid the high-speed attention it deserves.
The results of the years HSC examinations really expose the deep cracks in our education sector, built up over decades. The average pass rate in this year’s HSC and equivalent examinations stands at 58.83 percent, 18.95 percentage point lower than last year and the lowest in 21 years. The number of GPA-5 achievers also fell from 145,911 last year to 69,097 this time around.
The results are really shocking and indeed a real “ eye opener” as the education adviser said. The fact that our education system has been suffering is no surprise to anybody. Our education system needed a jolt to portray its true picture. The real crisis of our education system was being hidden to show good results in public examinations and this backfired as students went on to job market, where the majority have struggled and miserably failed.
The inflated results of the public examinations in previous years had masked the real learning gaps that have become firmly entrenched over the years. There is no denying the fact that the education system in Bangladesh is a horse and buggy one and it looks asymmetrical one in modern age. At the root of our educational crisis lies rote memorisation instead of analytical thinking, a knotty problem plaguing our education system for decades. The poor quality of schools and colleges, shortage of highly capable teachers and their inadequate pay as well as training to cope with the ever-developing aspects of modern education, and other structural deficiencies have persisted for years. Despite repeated warnings from educationists about the consequences of neglect, little has been done to address those problem.
We see a massive expansion in access to higher education in colleges and universities, but their quality is not guaranteed. Enormous enrolment alone is not learning. There has been trade-off between quantity and quality. There is also clear regional disparity, for instance, places such as Cumilla, Jashore, Mymensingh and Sylhet are lagging behind in terms of pass rates. Equally troubling is the fact that this year, 202 educational institutions across the country recorded a zero pass rate. This staggering number reflects not only the Achilles ‘heel of the students, but also institutional collapse. Such institutions require immediate government intervention, targeted teacher training. Treating them as isolated cases would only deepen the systemic rot.
Government must invest is this sector improving the quality of education to meet the global standards as spending money on education sector is a great investment for the future, not an expense. The authorities must equip students with the right tools, ie proper and quality education. And for that, we need a large number of good institutions with a fleet of efficient teachers, and no diploma mills.
