Alaul Alam :
Equal opportunity for all children to access to education is broadly refers to inclusive education. The motto of inclusive education not only includes the learners of diverse communities in regular classroom but also talks about a uniform education system. This education system is committed to ensuring access, presence, participation and achievement of all students.
Like many other countries Bangladesh is committed to ensuring education for all. It has been working for years. By the time it has achieved tremendous success in primary school enrollment but the challenges to include the children with disabilities to the main stream of education are still prevailing.
The national education policy 2010 aims at ensuring quality education for all children. It has emphasized to bring all socio-economically disadvantaged children into education including street children along with ensuring the rights of all children with disabilities.
The report claims that around 15 per cent of the world’s population lives with some form of disability. It is estimated that more than 190 millions of children with disabilities are isolated from the school community and quality education disrupting inclusion in education.
The reasons are many why countries are unable to ensure inclusive education. Poverty, gender inequality, ethnicity, remoteness, language barriers, issues for children with disabilities, climate vulnerabilities and education in emergency are many of the reasons standing against bringing inclusive education.
It is no denial that most countries take initiatives to run specialized and separate activities for the children with disabilities than integrating them within mainstream programs and services that usually disrupts inclusive education as in this way the individual country can hardly address the concerns of the disadvantaged to ensure quality education.
Undoubtedly, the sudden attack of Covid-19 has caused a heavy academic recession across the globe. We know that the economic loss may be regained but it is still tough to count how far catastrophe in the education sector would be! Obviously, the current Covid-19 crisis has made inequalities in the educational system.
It is true that during the Covid-19 crisis most countries have shifted their education paradigms. The rapid move to online teaching and learning has advantaged the learning community but findings reveal that in case of the developing and poor countries, digital education has not been as a catalyst for ensuring inclusive education.
In Bangladesh as soon as the pandemic hit hard, the country’s education went online that was a time-centric initiative taken by the government. But different studies reveal that this approach has not been inclusive for learning due to some limitations. Almost half of the students studying at primary and secondary levels were left from the new trend of education. Students from poor families, ethnic minorities and madrasa background hardly have access to digital education.
On top of that, the children with disabilities and children with special needs are bearing the most brunt of it as the risk of being their left behind is due to the absence of appropriate assistive equipment, access to internet and accessible materials and support they need to cope with the new normal learning paradigm. Also child labors and child marriage may lead to shrinking the learning opportunity for many in the country amid the crisis.
It is predicted from different angles that the hard- earned success in massive enrollment at primary level of education may face a drastic consequence. It is estimated that the rate of school dropout will be higher for girls of the poor families. According to UNICEF, around 10 million students will never come back to schools due to the unprecedented Covid-19.
The post Covid response to school enrolment would be challenging as many students from low financial background are likely to be denied of education due to their involvement in workplaces to help their families. The more the students’ drop out increases, the more the inclusive education will be disrupted in the country. School reopening may be challenging but more challenging is to ensure education for all in an inclusive manner.
It is true that Bangladesh has taken many positive initiatives towards inclusion in education that is really worth mentioned but it needs to go a far to tackle all the challenges in regard to ensuring quality inclusive education within a same framework.
However, to ensure inclusive education the first and foremost challenge is to bring all children under the equal umbrella including the creation of an equitable learning opportunity for all through reducing various types of disparities irrespective of their identity, background and ability and if it is not done on priority basis, it is tough to achieve the sustainable goal in education.
This education system also claims to have unique curriculum along with quality teachers committed to serving the learning community. More importantly, the post Covid-19 challenges in education should be addressed in an organized way and the focus should be given to increasing the amount of government allowance and other supporting programs along with ensuring the equal treatment for all to ensure inclusion in education.
(Mr. Alam teaches at Prime University. Email: [email protected])
