Nearly 1.5 million children aged five are out of school students in pre-primary education, the number will be 3.8 million, if the children four years of age are added.
This was revealed at the launching ceremony of Education Watch-2013 titled ‘State of pre-primary education in Bangladesh’ at the LGED Bhbaban in the city on Sunday.
Campaign for Popular Education (CAMPE) in cooperation with European Union (EU) organized the launching function. Primary and Mass Education Minister Advocate Mostafizur Rahman, Founder Chairperson of BRAC Fazle Hasan Abed, Executive Director of CAMPE Rasheda K. Choudhury, Director General of Directorate of Primary Education Shyamal Kanti Ghosh, among others, addressed the function with Chairperson of CAMPE Kazi Rafiqul Alam in the chair.
Principal researcher of Education Watch-2013 Study Samir Ranjan Nath made a presentation of major findings of the education watch at the function.
Mostifizur Rahman said despite resource constraints, the government is taking different programmes for the expansion of pre-primary education throughout the country.
“A total of 15,000 teachers have already been recruited for pre-primary education. The process of recruiting 7,000 teachers for the pre-primary education is underway,” he added. There is no alternative to education for building a knowledge-based society, the minister said adding both the government and the private initiative are needed to provide education opportunities for all children to build an economically advanced country.
The government has started adopting pre-primary education in the past several years, other speakers said adding it has already developed a pre-primary curriculum and textbooks. Majority of the schools, in general, are not adequately prepared to provide pre-primary education, they added. Adequate physical facilities, learning materials, child-friendly classrooms, joyful teaching-learning environment and trained teachers are needed to get popularity of pre- primary education, the speakers further said.
According to the report, kindergartens were at the top of pre-primary education providers where 27.9 percent of the students were admitted. It was followed by the government and NGO operated non-formal schools with 23.1 and 21.7 percent. Mosque based schools and madrasas received 15.7 percent of the students, it added.
Referring to the data of Directorate of Primary Education, the report said number of pre-primary students in government and non-government schools was 0.9 million in 2010, over 1.5 million in 2011 and nearly 1.7 million in 2012.
