Md Bayazid Khan :
Bangladesh offers free and compulsory primary education to all the school-aged children and the government adopts various steps to make it successful as nobody would be left out of school. The country has made remarkable progress in boosting enrolment and attendance in primary education alongside with reducing dropout considerably. However, still a considerable number of children have been out of school because of dropout or have never been enrolled in school due to social adversities, unfavorable living conditions because of geographical impediments and last but not the least financial constraints. In addition, the government has deep concern for the recent rise of dropped out children because of confronting huge learning losses or engaging income-generating activities for livelihood embraced during the pandemic. Despite the progress that has been made in education especially in the primary education sector over the years, still there is room for much improvement in the field of creating access to receive basic education for these unfortunate out of school children.
Children that are out of school tend to be mostly from economically disadvantaged households and vulnerable populations of urban slums and hard to reach/remote areas like low-lying haors, tea gardens, Chars, tribe inhabited areas, hilly areas etc. Above mentioned areas’ vulnerable families also have financial problems that certainly discourage them from receiving the basic education of their children. So, they need to provide not only the opportunities of acquiring foundational literacy and numeracy but also to provide skill-developing training to make them employable and competent or to the labor market.
Work-based learning can provide a strong learning environment and develop job oriented skills to out of school children. Employers must get benefit by recruiting these learners through utilizing productive skills of them. The country can also benefit from those skilled labor forces and ensuring out of school children’s smoother transition from school to stable employment without heavy government investment.
Work-based learning is a promising way of engaging never enrolled or dropped out youths to work by making them employable through providing skills development training as well as foundational literacy and numeracy knowledge. It also provides young people with an alternative way to learn in a blend of job-oriented academic curriculum. It can provide them with a bridge into careers, equip them with skills that are in demand in the labour market and connect them to potential employers.
Employers or industry owners’ engagement is essential to make work-based learning initiatives for out of school children/youths a success. Therefore, finding ways to make work-based learning more attractive to employers is a key challenge for policy makers. The government needs to motivate employers by clarifying the philosophy of this philanthropic initiative that it not only provides an opportunity for employers to show social responsibility, but also be well aligned with their business objectives. There may be an MOU with the government and employers for providing logistic and monetary support to run the work-based learning centers as a collaborative initiative. Learners also have a contract with the concerned employers to work for the employers for a stipulated time with the rationale wages.
Work-based learning may promote and develop both academic and skill development learning of out of school children and empowering them to become successful in the job market. Their developed job-oriented skills and achieved academic knowledge may be demanded by the international labor market too. Therefore, developing a significant number of out of school children into skilled workforces by nourishing them through launching work-based learning centers should get the most priority to the government and the following step might be considered by the government.
The government may sign an MOU to the employers to run countrywide work-based learning centers providing logistic, technical and monetary support. Curriculum development and management related activities might be administered by the concerned ministry and directorate.
BOESL may be given responsibility of running some centers in each district so that skilled manpower might be developed for international labor market recruitment.
Skill development training courses might be selected considering the learning center area’s labor market demand as well as local natural resources that have alignment to used raw materials by the employers. Target students’ family profession may also be considered.
Flexible timetable may become effective for smooth running of the centers. In addition, the students might be provided nutritious food and a monthly stipend. Considering massive demand for skilled labor forces in the competitive domestic and international labor market as well as fulfilling SDG targets, the government may introduce the work-based learning approach for mainstreaming up to the secondary tier.
(The writer works for primary education in Bangladesh).
