MOST government colleges in the capital Dhaka have more teachers than sanctioned posts while the academic normalcy is under threat in the colleges at district level due to acute scarcity of teachers. An English daily on Wednesday reported, shortage of teachers is badly affecting academic activities in government colleges in outlying districts. We are apprehensive of such teacher crisis ahead of admission for the HSC level for 2014-15 in the next session.
HSC, the tertiary level of education in Bangladesh, is considered the most important gateway to higher education. Therefore, getting admission into a good college is assumed to open the gateway of one’s future. Incidentally, good colleges are mostly situated in the capital. This concentration of better colleges in Dhaka has also opened a type of education business of the sorts amongst the teachers and they tend to get a position in Dhaka for a better life style too. But, the overwhelming majority of the students who live in the remote areas are deprived of quality education primarily due to teachers’ unavailability and their reluctance to live at the district level. The Education Ministry has failed to check the Dhaka bound onrush of teachers. But the problem lies also in politics. The report said, most of the teachers are attached to colleges in Dhaka from institutions in remote areas on ‘political considerations.’ Here, we would like to consider the view of the president of BCS General Education Association that the teachers attached to colleges in Dhaka are ‘powerful’ and unwilling to go outside the capital. They want to stay back in Dhaka which offers them opportunity to earn a lot of money through coaching business.
Meanwhile, the ruling party student wing BCL men stopped the process of HSC admission of at least four colleges in Rajshahi, Khulna, Jessore and Lakshmipur demanding a quota for them. Reports have it that BCL leaders collected huge money from admission seekers promising enrolment at the respective colleges. However, office the Rajshahi College claimed that they would not pay heed to ‘the illegal demand’ of BCL cadres and the students would be enrolled in accordance with the merit list. We appreciate the decision taken by the college authority as we believe, admission according to merit must be ensured to promote a meritorious nation for the future.
We urge the Education Ministry to take urgent steps to solve these problems, firstly to mitigate the teacher crisis in remote colleges as the new session of HSC is very near to commencement. Besides, to save our meritorious students, the BCL men must be stopped from taking money illegally for the admission business. The teachers should not be politicized like the BCL cadres and must keep themselves apart from illegal ‘coaching business’ for the sake of their professional ethics. The government should take punitive actions against its cadres who are trying to snatch away our future agents of nation building.
