Masum Billah :
This year’s SSC examination on a short syllabus started on 14 November and will end on 23 November. Collecting a certificate by sitting practically for examination retains much significance and pure joy which our students missed due to Corona for the last two years. Evaluation is an important part of teaching learning process. However, we have been accustomed to giving importance and remaining busy more with examination rather than pure teaching learning situation. And it necessarily happens as higher educational institutions, job market, job promotion and society-everywhere a document on how much a student has learnt is expected and so students, guardians and educational institutions, by fair means of fowl, want certificates with good grading.
This year 22 lac 27 thousand 113 students attend the SSC examinations and the calculations of nine education boards show the regular examinees are 16 lac 70 thousand 380. That means 2 lac 77 thousand 876 students don’t have any trace. This number will increase if the records of another two boards are available and out of this dropped out students 72 percent or 1 lac 99 thousand 814 are girls that necessarily draws our attention and we feel much concerned with the matter. Many girls have become the subject to child marriage. The government and NGOs work for retaining ‘child marriage’ still it happens and during Covid it increased at an alarming rate. This is not only for poverty but for security of the girls. To save the growing girls from eve-teasing, ruffians as the growing boys receive political patronage and become rowdy and dangerous across the society even in the universities; society does not have respite for it. So, the simple, poor guardians want to save their daughters from the social vice currently prevailing everywhere. In case of any incident takes place, the victim has to face nightmare ordeals. However, teachers should not give up hope. Still society hopes some positive things from them. ‘Rasheda K. Chowdhury says, these girls need to be brought back to school erasing the condition to remain unmarried for getting ‘stipend’. We endorse our views with her. It is seen that 16 percent registered students have dropped out of SSC examination. No test examination has taken place that selects students to sit for SSC examination. Still, this big number of students remain absent from examination .One daily has published a news that in nine districts seven thousand and five hundred ‘child marriage’ took place during Corona pandemic. That shows the indication how dangerous situation it is if we can see the situation of 64 districts and slum area girls! UNICEF says Bangladesh faces the severe challenge of child marriage. It further says that Bangladesh occupies 8th position among the first ten countries which are victim to child marriage. She has witnessed 3 crore 80 lac child marriages since 1970 and more one crore may meet the same fate in the coming decade.
South Asian Network on Economic Modeling (SANEM), a non-government research organization finds in January 2021 that the rate of poverty before corona was 20.5 percent that has climbed up to 42 percent and the ultra-poor has increased the highest number. The survey was conducted from 02 November to 17 December 2020. Various researches shows that normally every year 17 percent children drop out before finishing the primary education and 37 percent in the secondary education. Two principal causes can be held responsible for it-first one is obviously ‘poverty’ and the second one ‘child marriage’. Corona has intensified poverty particularly in the slums and `char’ and `haor’ areas influencing ‘dropout rate’ in schools. In addition to that, new families are joining the fleet of poverty. Bangladesh Bureau of Educational Information and Statistics says that the number of students in the primary and secondary level is about three crore and total students in the country are about four crore, many of whom have faced a serious setback due to Corona virus. Save the Children conducted a survey that shows that 97 lac children around the world will not come back to schools and a great number of them will be victims of child marriage. Save the Children conducted one survey that shows that 97 lac children are around the world will not come back to school and among a great number of them will be the victim of child marriage. T. W. Suz, a professor of Agricultural Economy, Chicago University said, the investment in education is the greatest among all the investments in economics’. That is really true and for that reason we must bring our children back to school, may be, in the non-formal way or in another form. But giving them education must be ensured.
(Masum Billah is President, English Teachers’ Association of Bangladesh and an education expert in
BRAC Education).
