Masumuzzaman, Narayanganj
Although the government spends a hundred crore of money for printing textbooks and it (government) is thinking to reduce number of the textbooks in school level, many school teachers and managing committees in Narayanganj prescribe as many books as possible to the schoolchildren.
It was known that they force the students to collect their prescribed books as they have unholy alliance with private publishers. The teachers and committee members take huge amount as bribe from the private publishing houses. Saiful Islam Jwel, member of a high school’s managing committee in Narayanganj for three consecutive terms, told the Bangladesh Post, “In my first term, a private publishing house paid five lakh taka to the school for enlisting their books. In the second term, a private publisher paid seven lakh taka, while taka nine lakh were paid in the last term.”
According to many other committee members and guardians of students, most of the schools in Narayanganj get financial benefit from publishing houses for prescribing their books. In every year, the private publishers pay money to school and the managing committee took it as bribe. The private publishers and their paying agents move to schools at end of the year, particularly in the month of November and December, to woo the teachers and members of managing committee.
The school students are being overburdened with additional books, including the notebooks, and the textbooks prescribed by the government. The government provides printed books to the students of class one to ten in a bid to increase education rate and ensure quality education in the country. The government distributes all the textbooks in first day of the year free of cost aiming to prevent drop out student failing to purchase his or her books, but high schools’ managing committees in Narayanganj take bribe from private publishing houses for imposing five books instead of government books to the students every year.
The managing committees take a handsome amount every year from publishers to force the students for purchasing the five books, including English Grammar, Bengali Grammar, and General Knowledge book. The committees provide a book list for the students and the schoolchildren as well as their guardians who are compelled to purchase the books with high rate. The extra five books that imposed by the school committee are too much costly which crosses the purchasing limit of many students and their guardians. The poor students suffer a lot to purchase the extra books from the market with high rate. However, the prescribed books are sub-standard.
The government supplies standard grammar books in English and Bengali but the teachers of many schools do not teach from those books. The teachers force the students to purchase their selected books as the questions of the examinations made from those books. Many teachers prepare syllabus from their selected books mentioning page numbers resulted students are bound to buy those books. Shariful Islam, father of a nine-grader student, told the Bangladesh Post that he has bought his son’s books, those were selected by school, at the cost of Tk. 2,000.
The educational quality is reducing day by day due to substandard books provided by the private publishers. The conscious guardians called to the authorities concerned to take initiative against these irregularities.