Masum Billah :
The closure of educational institutions saw its crossing of 500 days on 29 July 2021 when we came to learn further extension of closure till 31 August that clearly means the doors of our educational institutions will remain shut up for 533 days. We don’t actually know what is going to happen after that. The kindergartens of the country have seen the signal of being closed being unable to cope with this long closure for eighteen months and already half of the kindergartens have already been closed. These institutions seem to be guardian less as the Ministry of Primary and Mass Education says these institutions don’t belong to them and similar is the case with the Ministry of Education in case of the kindergartens giving education beyond grade five and above. However, these institutions have been established responding to the needs and calls of the society and definitely our children are going there and their number is around ten million. So, how far it is reasonable to say these institutions don’t belong to MoPME?
Kindergarten Schools need to register with the government that many kindergartens did not follow and probably the ministry has some anger over this community. However, we think kindergartens accommodate ten lac teachers and with these teachers minimum forty-fifty lac people get their bread. Their way of teaching may have some questions and doubts but they are not solely responsible for this. The miserable picture of our entire primary education system gets reflected here. So, only kindergartens cannot be held responsible for that. We rather want to say that many people adopt very unfair means in the society and they are affluent and rich but the people working in kindergartens don’t get themselves involved in that type of corruption rather they are disseminating education to our ten million children. They obtain very poor salary and to supplement their income they do private tuition which stands as a common affair in the flourishing schools including government schools. Due to Corona pandemic that area of income has also stopped leaving them in an extremely difficult situation. Many have already changed their profession and have resorted to such kind of jobs that don’t; go with their degree and status. This year only 30 percent students have got enrolled in KGs and all of them are not giving tuition fee. Half of these institutions will not resume their activities that mean five lac teachers are not coming back to this profession.
‘Bangladesh Primary Education Statistics-2020’ mentions that we have nine types of primary schools which accommodate one lac 332 institutions with two crore 15 lac 52thousnad students and 7lac 40 thousand 471 teachers. Out of them KG schools are 29thousnad 897 that accommodate 40 lac 75thousand 533 learners and two lac 847 teachers. However, the leaders of KG schools claim that the number of schools would be more than sixty thousand and teacher and staff about ten lac. We also think so. We always get a confusing picture about the number of KG schools, their teachers and students as the Thana Education Offices hardly bother about the existence of KG schools and this is why we don’t get the exact number. We need to depend on the KG school leaders to learn the number. The available sources say that we have more or less one lac 33 thousand primary schools and out of them 65 thousand 620are government and the rest are run privately where about one crore students read. This figure tells that it’s not a fun that we will say kindergartens don’t belong to any ministry.
For homeless, helpless and shelter less children `Reaching Out of School Children (ROSC)
‘Global Partnership for Education’ conference decided to develop a fund for reforming the education system of the poor nations of the world. The conference was held by the initiative of UK and Kenya and within the next five years this fund would be spent. It will give educational opportunity to extra nine crore children of the world and educational environment will be created for 17crore children. Interested countries have agreed to the point of collecting the amount. The chairman of GPE Julia Gillard, the ex- Prime Minister of Australia expressed his firm belief to collect the money but I get astonished to see the role of our rich Muslim countries who misspent a huge amount of money for leading luxurious life without giving even a little thought to the education of poor children of the world.
In response to the hapless kindergarten schools of Bangladesh, the government could advise the guardians to pay at least half of the usual tuition fee and the schools must continue their academic activities online or using mobile or home schooling system. This decision would be better for all concerned as students would have been in touch with education and the guardians would be relieved of the tension they suffer from as students keep glued to mobile or TV screen or loiter here and there unprotected. This would save the families of kindergarten teachers from starvation and social security would have been restored. We must remember that it is our collective responsibility to save these social institutions. We can in no way ignore or try to avoid such a visual reality of kindergartens where ten million children belong to.
(Masum Billah Works for BRAC Education as a specialist and is the President of English Teachers’ Association of Bangladesh. Email: [email protected])
