DESPITE the gradual decline in the number of dropouts at the Secondary level since 2008, grade eight students accounted for almost half of those who dropped out last year and this presents a worrying picture about the entire education system of the country. Government’s latest educational report shows that 40.29 percent of the Secondary students dropped out last year with 19.11 percent of them leaving their institutions at Class-VIII alone, as a media outlet reports said on Friday. Experts hold the view that the drop out level at only Class-VIII paints a dismal scenario which underlies the poor development of our education system.
A report says over the last 10 years, Education Sector has received 11-16 percent of the total government budget. Government expenditure on education as a proportion of GDP has been hovering around two percent for the last few years in Bangladesh. This is lower than countries like India (3.8 percent), Vietnam (6.3 percent), Malaysia (5.9 percent) and Thailand (7.6 percent). This lower expenditure for Education Sector in comparison to other countries marks out the lacks of government’s attention that helps to hike the drop out rate. Together with governmental failure, poverty, lack of parental awareness, insufficient numbers of schools in marginalized areas, communication difficulties etc. pivotally enhance the rising rate of drop outs. In poverty-stricken Bangladesh, the fact 71 percent of spending per child in government-assisted Secondary schools came from parents shows the negligence of authorities with regard to education financing. Huge failures in SSC, HSC and Degree examinations speak clearly about the inefficiency of the system, mainly due to the poor quality of teaching and management. Another report says at the Secondary level, annual public expenditure per student is $36 (Tk 3040) in government assisted schools and $55 (Tk 4400) in Dakhil (secondary level) ‘madrasas’. These inadequate expenditures are factors which surely increase the number of drop outs.
A more precise way of analysing is by looking at government’s revenue expenditure on each student as a proportion of GDP per capita. As a rule of thumb, this should be in order of 20 percent for Secondary education. But according to 2013 data, we can deduce that this was about 5 percent for primary and 9 percent for upper secondary. In addition, government recurrent expenditure per student has declined for Secondary level education after 2013. These dismal payments for Secondary education is not acceptable where all concerned emphasize on the need to increase the expenditures for the Education sector.
Many may think that the Education Sector is getting adequate attention as the size of the education budget has increased by 25 percent last fiscal year. However, it is also necessary to strip away the effects of inflation to deduce actually how much the education budget has increased; for instance, after adjusting for inflation, we can see that the education budget has increased by 18 percent as opposed to 25 percent. Looking at the way the education system is being managed, this utterance appears more as a lip service than as a matter of conviction.
This frustrating condition of the educational sector reflects the failure of the government to run the educational sector properly. Whatever the matter, neglecting education means neglecting future.
